Wangechi Mutu
On September 9 this year, Mutu became the first black female artist to showcase her works in the façade of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The works of the Kenyan artist based in New York have filled a vacuum in the museum that was left empty since 1902.
“Her inaugural works for the Met’s façade—a set of four female bronze caryatids, larger than life and stylized in the tradition of high-ranking African women—challenge the institution’s own history of Eurocentrism and patriarchy,” writes TIME.
She is well known for her mixed media Afrofuturistic masterpieces, which focus on the female experience and incorporate elements of Western and African art and mythology.