Artist Wangechi Mutu transforms Galleria Borghese in Rome with ‘Black Soil Poems’

From June 10th to September 14th, 2025, artist Wangechi Mutu unveils her latest project, Black Soil Poems, at the iconic Galleria Borghese in Rome. This historic event marks the first solo exhibition by a living woman to be staged in the Galleria Borghese, a space traditionally associated with classical European art. Known for her evocative fusion of myth, memory, and materiality, artist Wangechi Mutu brings a powerful new voice into the Baroque villa’s storied halls.

Sponsored by FENDI and curated by Cloé Perrone, the exhibition reimagines the Galleria Borghese in Rome as a dynamic archive where African mythology, feminine identity, and postcolonial history enter into dialogue with marble, mosaics, and mythic imagery. Artist Wangechi Mutu scatters her sculptures across the villa’s ornate interiors and lush gardens, making the familiar feel fantastical and the forgotten newly visible.

At the entrance, two commanding bronze female figures welcome visitors—guardians of a different era, challenging the Eurocentric ideals embedded in traditional caryatids. Inside, Prayers, a large rosary made from soil and wood, hangs suspended, its organic materials contrasting with the permanence of marble sculptures nearby. In Suspended Playtime, plastic bags are tied into floating forms that echo African children’s games, but also critique the excess of global consumerism—offering a layered narrative that only artist Wangechi Mutu could shape so deftly within the classical grandeur of the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

On a floor lined with ancient mosaics, The Grains of Words uses coffee and tea to write out lyrics from Bob Marley’s War, channeling centuries of colonial memory into poetic protest. Bloody Rug, a silk carpet dyed a deep crimson, lies beneath Domenichino’s Hunting of Diana, casting a visceral shadow over the sanitized beauty of myth. Nearby, Poems by My Great Grandmother I unites an East African cooking pot with a fossil-like sculpture of earth—an homage to ancestral knowledge and generational storytelling.

The journey concludes in the gardens of the Galleria Borghese in Rome, where Water Woman—a majestic Black mermaid in bronze—reclines beneath the Roman sky. Her presence recalls the sensuality of Canova’s Paolina Borghese, but speaks from a different canon, one shaped by memory, resilience, and cultural reclamation.

With Black Soil Poems, artist Wangechi Mutu invites viewers to question dominant narratives and embrace alternate histories. In transforming the Galleria Borghese in Rome, she doesn’t just occupy space—she redefines it, turning the villa into a living, breathing dialogue between past and present, Europe and Africa, myth and memory.