IngridRobertMwangiHutter, Eastleigh Crossing, 2009
MwangiHutter
Eastleigh Crossing

After working and living together for a long time, Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter (*1975 Kenya, *1964 Germany) began signing their works together as a unit in 2005. Conceptually, their individual personalities dissolve into a miniature collective, in which the gender and origin of each is transferred to the other. Their works explore the role of skin colour and cultural origins, something also shaped by Mwangi’s experience of moving from Africa to Germany as a teenager. Both Mwangi and Hutter studied at the Hochschule Bildende Künste Saar (Academy of Fine Art and Design) in Saarbrüken. JE

artists' website: mwangihutter.art

The spontaneous performance Eastleigh Crossing shows a woman in casual dress on a street in Nairobi that is completely flooded after a pipe burst. The woman steps into the water. The people walking by are astonished and form a crowd around this apparently foreign and strange woman whose behaviour goes against all norms. Her actions remain mysterious: they are a seemingly ritualistic choreography in water, the medium of cleansing and defilement. JE

Courtesy IngridRobertMwangiHutter

Document media
video

Issue date
2009

Relations
ROS 1-3

Tags
normativity, dreamscapes