Galleria Borghese presents
Wangechi Mutu
Black Soil Poems
curated by Cloé Perrone
The Kenyan American artist is the first living female artist to exhibit at Galleria Borghese, with an exhibition that reimagines the museum through suspended forms, radical spatial gestures, and new mythologies.
An exhibition that extends from the museum’s interior rooms onto the façade and the Secret Gardens, with an installation at the American Academy in Rome
June 10 – September 14, 2025
Rome, April 17, 2025 – From June 10 to September 14, 2025, Galleria Borghese presents, for the first time within the residence of Cardinal Scipione, a solo exhibition by Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, titled Black Soil Poems, curated by Cloé Perrone. Like the recently concluded exhibition dedicated to the Baroque poet Giovan Battista Marino, this project also stems from the museum’s ongoing interest in poetry. Conceived as a site-specific intervention, it unfolds throughout the museum’s interior galleries, its façade, and the Secret Gardens. It challenges classical tradition through suspensions, fragmented forms, and newly imagined mythologies, establishing a multilayered dialogue between the artist’s contemporary language and the symbolic institutional authority.
