IngridMwangiRobertHutter

Here’s an example of Ingrid Mwangi’s body art, which she creates by wearing a template and allowing the sun to change the color of her skin.

Part of “Cosmic Drift”, 2001

Hat tip The International Museum of Women, via Feministing.  

At the International Museum of Women (via words of choice) :

Many contemporary women artists use their body to make a political statement. Artist Ingrid Mwangi is one of them, creating work that is innovative, visually striking and often shocking. She spent the first 15 years of her life in Kenya and has been living in Germany ever since. Through photography, performance, sound, installation and video, she’s created a “body of work” that questions both social and political conventions. Mwangi writes: My body is the only thing that I own… I react, interpret and question the clichés and stereotypes with which I am faced… I use art to awaken consciences.

Body Photographs

Mwangi’s 2001 photo series, “Static Drift” is, literally, body art. Her stomach is her medium. In each photo, Mwangi covered her skin with a stencil, and sat in the sun to let the exposed parts tan.

In the first photo, a pale map of Africa appears onto her tan stomach, with the English words “Bright Dark Continent.” In the second photo, it is the map that is dark, and the surrounding skin, pale. Within the outline of Germany we read the English words: “Burn Out Country.”

Through this series, Mwangi communicates the complexities of being a bi-racial woman in exile. When living in Africa, she says, she is seen as white; but in Germany, she is black.

In her book Your Own Soul, Mwangi’s work is summarized this way:

Ingrid Mwangi experiments with her own body, likening it to an open book upon which her own national and racial lineage is both written and read. … National titles and geographic borders are displaced from their habitual contexts, causing one to contemplate what nationalism, skin color, and ethnic identity mean when physically inscribed on a body-particularly a female body. Within the dichotomy of Mwangi’s personal biography the historical relationship between Germany and Africa, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and the oppressed, is also powerfully evoked.

This is one prolific photographer. Her list of works reads like a book. Ingrid was born in Kenya to a German mother and Kenyan father. She has grown up in both countries and is currently living in Germany. She is very outspoken about prejudice against people of color in Germany, and has used her photography to highlight her cause. Her video paintings, photography, and mixed medium artistry have been showcased in galleries around the world and are so popular that they usually attract large crowds.  To learn more about her art, visit her website.

foto daqui

Ingrid Mwangi é queniana, filha de pai queniano e de mãe alemã. Identidade, raça e auto-imagem são temas que a preocupam. O seu trabalho pode ser visto AQUI. É um trabalho que não me deixa indiferente. Pelo contrário, arrepia-me, pela força da mensagem. Pela forma como o faz. É sobre a luta contra o ódio, sobre a valorização das pessoas por quem elas são e não pelo que elas são, pelo que significam para nós todos na nossa humanidade partilhada. Se puderem, aproveitem o fim de semana para descobrir a obra de Ingrid Mwangi.