Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Wangechi Mutu
American, Kenyan; 21st-century
St. Louis, MO: Saint Louis Art Museum
50%
My Cave Call. HD Video. 2020
This video isn't quite kitsch, but it panders. It's a Bosch spinoff — three long takes represent heaven, earth, and hell — with a child's voiceover providing apocalypticism and woo-woo earthy stuff by turns. Compositionally each shot is nice if unexceptional, full and precise such that the work of looking seems to have been done for you. (Corny CGI wisps have a similarly facilitative effect.) When “fine artists” make films, the gallery context apologizes for stuff that would never fly in a theater. This is how Mutu’s gotten away with a work that, whether structurally or visually, develops nothing from its perfectly attractive substrate. (2024)