Thursday July 21 marked the opening reception of the new exhibit at the Miami Art Museum featuring Kenyan artist, Wangechi Mutu.

I first learned about Wangechi Mutu earlier this year when I received a brochure from the Miami Art Museum, which previewed the upcoming exhibitions. I remember being impressed when I saw exhibits featuring Chuck Close and Robert Rauschenberg, but I remember being most impressed when I saw the surreal figures in Wangechi Mutu's paintings. It seems that she combines collaged images from fashion magazines, ink drawings, and water color to create the lively and at times ghastly figures that reflect a broad range of concepts from Mutu's personal life, including sexuality, ethnicity, and political strife.

Despite the obstacles she faced in Kenya's turbulent environment, Wangechi Mutu pushed through and immigrated to the states in the 90's where she attended the Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences in New York and earned a Master's degree at the Yale School of Art. Since then, her work has been taking the art world by storm and has been included in several major galleries, such as the second Johannesburg biennale, Translocations at CUNY, Magic City at Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York, Out of the Box at the Queens Museum in New York, and Africaine at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY.

The exhibit runs through October 9, and remember that every Sunday the Miami Art Museum is open to the public at no charge.