The long conversation about women’s bodies and agency during this cray cray election cycle that tried to push society backwards about our bodies got me looking back at the work of Wangechi Mutu.  Mutu is one of my favorite contemporary artists.  Her collage and mixed media work investigates and challenges colonial narratives and images of women, particularly African women. Mutu appropriates images from fashion magazines to National Geographic to pornography to old medical drawings, reconstructs the female body illustrating how our deeply embedded stereotypes about black female identity live in society. Her images are beautiful and grotesque, satirical and political, alien and mythical. In 2010, MoMa’s curatorial team had this to say about her work:

Mutu has described women as “barometers,” ...