I enter the Galleria Borghese, and the marble envelops me like an ancient breath. It is a breath that speaks of eternity, perfection, and control. Yet, right in front of the façade, Wangechi Mutu’s bronze caryatids interrupt this apparent calm. They are not mere decorative figures: they are bodies oscillating between past and future, between African memory and imagined cosmologies, between strength and fragility. They bear the weight of a building that does not belong to them, yet they do so with a silent will that seems to say: “You do not control us.”
I move through the rooms and notice the visitors. Some linger, captivated; others snap hurried photos, distracted by the great names of the Italian tradition. Some are here merely to say, “I’ve been to the Borghese,” without immediately perceiving what shifts within the spaces. But the suspended heads weep, and the tears of bronze and intertwined fabrics challenge even the most superficial gaze: each tear is resistance, memory, and strength that refuses to bow to indifference. We, members of the United Nations, are determined to save future generations from the scourge of war.
I think of their origins, of the ritual practices of Central African peoples who preserved skulls as memory of ancestors, and of the Baroque tradition that canonizes beauty. Here fragility is not decorative, it is not heroic: it is alive, oscillating, and breathing. Error becomes matter, and the world seems more real, more vulnerable, more possible—even for those who initially refuse to see it. We refuse to believe that humanity is so tragically bound to the starless night of racism and war.
I move on and encounter interwoven tires, suspended in the void. Childhood games become complex structures, symbols of creativity and survival. Poverty transforms into a metaphor for freedom, and even the most distracted visitors feel a small jolt: something in Mutu’s gesture challenges them, pushes them to look beyond the ordinary. Until the philosophy that considers one race superior and another inferior is finally discredited and abandoned, peace will remain only a dream.
In the Secret Gardens, I stop before the Water Woman. An African mermaid, half woman, half abyss, connected to the Swahili legends of the Nguva and Mami Wata. She consoles nothing, promises nothing, reassures nothing. She is pure presence, and even those merely passing by feel, unconsciously, time suspended. The artist shares something intimate: the perception of herself as a creature in continuous transformation, suspended between worlds and possibilities, fragile and powerful at once. Until Africans rise and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are equal before God, the African Continent will not know peace.
The words arrive almost like a breath: We, members of the United Nations, pledge all our strength to the cause of freedom and justice for all peoples. Historical memory, political resistance, and poetry intertwine with bodies and materials. Mutu seems to confide: beauty is never separate from suffering, and even among distracted visitors, something stirs.
I walk and feel contradictions, repetitions, but also possibilities. The marbles observe, relentless, contaminated by the unexpected: by the weeping of the heads, by the resistance of the materials, by the presence of those who observe without knowing they observe. No one completely wins: Mutu does not annihilate the canon, and the canon does not absorb Mutu. Yet something happens: the Borghese collection is no longer innocent, and Mutu is no longer merely a visitor of a sacred space, but a co-creator of a world that resists and transforms, even in the eyes of the most distracted. We will overcome this malicious philosophy.
I think of the words that might be hers, intimate, whispered between one suspension and another: Some choose to see ugliness; I choose to see beauty. Every encounter, even the most superficial, contains the possibility of unexpected change. In this exhibition, Mutu’s poetics become philosophy: inevitable metamorphosis, vulnerability as a gift, error as a tool for evolution. Until peace, justice, and equality prevail worldwide.
And as I exit, I still feel the weight of the suspended bodies, the glow of the bronzes, the still water of the Secret Gardens. The Galleria Borghese retains its majesty, but I am different. I have witnessed the encounter of impossible worlds, between past and future, between sacred and hybrid, between marble and weeping bronze. There is no absolute victor, but the subtlest victory is within us: the capacity to feel, to recognize beauty in fragments, to walk among errors and metamorphoses with open eyes, even when the rest seems distracted.
Mutu is here: artist, artwork, and visitor intertwine in a continuous flow of possibilities, a silent diary written with living materials, where memory, politics, poetry, intimacy, and even distraction coexist in a single suspended breath. Grains of Words, Haile Selassie’s 1963 speech to the United Nations transformed into song by Bob Marley in the 1976 album Rastaman Vibration, remains the thread that binds it all, memory transformed into song.
Video made by the same author of the article
Exhibition Title
Poemi della terra nera
Black Soil Poems
Dates
June 10 – September 14, 2025
Venue
Galleria Borghese
Piazzale Scipione Borghese, 5 – 00197 Rome, Italy
Artist
Wangechi Mutu
Born in Nairobi in 1972, she is one of the most significant voices in contemporary global art. She lives and works between Nairobi and Brooklyn. Her practice spans sculpture, collage, video, and installation, addressing themes such as identity, colonialism, feminism, and spirituality.
Curator
Cloé Perrone
Exhibition Description
For the first time, the Galleria Borghese hosts a solo exhibition by a contemporary artist: Black Soil Poems by Wangechi Mutu. The exhibition unfolds as a site-specific intervention across the entire museum: from interior rooms to the façade, from the Secret Gardens to outdoor spaces.
Mutu engages in dialogue with the permanent collection, introducing suspended sculptures, immersive installations, and works blending organic and symbolic materials. Her creations evoke contemporary mythologies, exploring themes of memory, identity, and transformation.
Key Works
The Seated I and The Seated IV (2019): Two large bronze caryatids welcoming visitors at the museum entrance, challenging classical tradition with a powerful, feminine presence.
Water Woman: A sculptural figure emerging from the Secret Gardens, symbolizing the connection between nature and spirituality.
Ndege, Suspended Playtime, and First Weeping Head: Suspended works floating through the galleries, creating a dialogue between past and present.
Shavasana I (2019): A bronze figure covered by a straw mat, exhibited at the American Academy in Rome, reflecting on death and meditation.
Themes and Language
The exhibition explores the relationship between contemporary art and tradition, using materials such as bronze, fabrics, hair, and earth. Mutu’s works interrogate history, memory, and identity, offering a poetic and critical vision of the world.