ingrid mwangi    Minimal, uncompromising and intelligent, Ingrid Mwangi's works elegantly navigate the space between the realms of personal and social identity. She explores an ever-shifting intersection of themes, including feminism, colonialism, stereotyping, politics and globalization, conceptual theory and autobiography. Her work is always personal, as she uses her body, her voice, and her mind to create her video and sound installations, performance art, spoken words, and photography. Born in Kenya of African and German parents, Mwangi attempts to understand herself and, through her work, various degrees of society, history, and community. Much of the artist’s work plays on a reversal and inversion of ways of seeing—the viewer sees the artist as the artist’s conception of the ways society views her as an Other.

In Shades of Skin, Mwangi offers herself to her audience bare, stripped of all clothing and preconceptions. Hands held before her face, eyes closed and lips sealed, the artist is simultaneously present in body and absent in spirit. Her back turned to the camera, she shields her chest and heart, her fingers press nervously into the flesh of her thighs, and toes curls above the jagged edge of a cloth that recalls a coastline or country’s boundary in its shape. The bright half-healed scars that sweep across the artist's back remind the viewer of the unresolved colonial tensions in both the European countries and their former colonies, a well as African scarification rituals and the psychosis of cutting/self-mutilation. Like the slashes on her back, Mwangi's body is sliced into sections by the camera. The artist’s nudity and the minimal elegance of the photographs speak of vulnerability, contemplation, and acceptance of self. The jump between associations, as between colonialism, scarification and cutting, betray a separation of the artist’s African and European identities. The physical separation of her body begs the question of the view and ownership of the artist’s body. Does she offer herself freely or does the viewer betray her confidence by looking at the artist’s body unaware? Is she present in her own skin? Who does her body belong to; the artist, or the public that pushes its assumptions on her flesh?

As the photographs progress to the right, each panel shows a more remote portion of the artist's body in a darker shade, until the last panel, which features just the top portion of her feet obscured by shadow. Mwangi seems to hide here, disappearing into the darkness and leaving the cloth, an inanimate object, in her place.

--Amanda Shoemaker, MA, Art History, George Washington University