Apr 04, 2024 - Sale 2664

Sale 2664 - Lot 159

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
WANGECHI MUTU (1973 - )
Untitled (Bottle People Series).

A pair of mixed media and glass sculptures, 1997. Approx. 11x4 inches and 9½x3 inches.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection.

Exhibited: (similar examples) Laurie Ann Farrell. Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora, p. 143; fig 84a-c; Margo Norton and Vivian Crockett, Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined, pp. 20-23.

This striking pair of sculpture are scarce, early assemblages made by the artist - Wangechi Mutu began this series while completing her BFA at Cooper Union in 1997. Mutu's Bottle People Series were first exhibited in a 2003-04 traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of African Art, New York. A larger group from the artist's collection were featured as her earliest works in her 2023 retrospective Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at the New Museum, New York.