Germany and Kenya / 2005 / 6mins / Installation, Video Art

In this video performance, we see a split screen with the backs of two heads with short hair – one of a black woman and one of a white man. The two heads are slowly shaved, beginning with different patterns until both are finally completely bald. This double image refers, on the one hand, to the connotations of different hair styles from a gender and cultural point of view. On the other hand, these differences become nullified: from behind, all ‘faceless’ shaved heads look alike, regardless of gender, origin, skin color and social status. The video thus reflects the self-awareness of the artistic duo, who see themselves as a unit striving to overcome the separation of different artistic personalities.

Mwangi Hutter

Artist duo, Mwangi Hutter (Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter), merged names and biographies to become one artist, to resist fixed notions of identity based on race, gender and cultural backgrounds. Ingrid Mwangi was born in 1975 in Nairobi, Kenya. Robert Hutter was born in 1964 in Ludwigshafen, Germany. They both received New Artistic Media degrees from the University of Fine Arts Saar, Saarbrücken, and have received scholarships from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, and residency scholarships of the Rhineland-Palatinate studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Mwangi’s work has been shown at the Museum for African Art, NY and the Bienal de Sao Paulo, amongst others. They have collaborated on works for several exhibitions including: Next Flag 1, The Casino Luxembourg Forum of Contemporary Art; Exhibition of Video Works Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter, Center of Contempory Art of East Africa, GoDown Arts Center, Nairobi; and A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. Mwangi and Hutter live in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Ingrid Mwangi works in a range of media, including video, installation, photography and performance art. Her works confront issues of race, identity and gender. Often using her body as subject, Mwangi explores her physicality, as well as issues of blackness and heritage, in relation to sociopolitical systems. She investigates identity in the context of personal experience and cultural positions on the foreign and exotic. Robert Hutter’s work centers on the body as an interface between self and society, using computer and performance techniques to investigate such themes as the virtual body.
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