It’s called the Façade Commission – four sculptures at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Although the four niches were built into the stonework when this entrance was opened in 1902, this is the first time they have actually housed sculptures.
These could not have been four timelier, more other worldly and energetically powerful works of art.
From the moment I read about their installation last fall the sculptures have called to me. I finally answered the call one recent sunny Sunday morning, an acolyte in contemplation and humble communion.
The installation is called The NewOnes, will free Us. Created by the Kenyan born artist Wangechi Mutu, it depicts four robed and seated women, two on the right side of the museum entrance, two on the left.
At first consideration, they are sentinels guarding the door and protecting the contents within. But they also evoke intermediaries at portal of the worlds, giving and denying entrance and exit.
Their seating is an important and deliberate element. The forms of women serving as chairs or pedestals, called caryatid, are a way in which ceremonial seating has traditionally been rendered in Greek architecture and African sculptures — women shouldering the weight of the world. Here Mutu has the women themselves regally enthroned.
The robes of the figures on the far left and far right are made of coils that run horizontally, inducing the sensation of a waterfall. The robes of the two inner figures have coils that flow in a circular manner, rounding the curves of their bodies like a stream winding through the earth. They are covered in dignity, cast in garments that protect and deflect like armor yet inviting the gentlest touch.
Each woman’s features are distinct – flared noses, lips full and blackened, with tapered fingers draped over their knees.
Their faces and heads are more oblong shaped than human heads, conjuring beings both African and extraterrestrial. Their eyes are narrowed, almost closed, peering into a future or interior domain visible only to them.
After Mutu cast the bronze over her molds, she painted the patina with fire, bringing out a burnished glow in their sienna-hued skin. Over many months of warm and cold air, sun, wind, snow and rain, the color has weathered in places to a green blue shade.
Mutu replicated the ceremonial lip plates worn by women of status in some indigenous cultures as mirrors, placed at the forehead, mouth, back of the head and eyes of the women. They refract light and reflect the gaze of those who view them. They also harken to antennae, receiver, visor and microphone positioned at key chakras, broadcasting messages from other realms.
The auras emanating from these guardians of the galaxies are palpable. I was transfixed in their presence, infused with the force of their bearing, and transported outside time and space around the spiral of the ancestors, those living and those yet to be born.
Looking out from the steps of the museum, I marveled at what they have seen in the last few months. From pandemic and isolation, to protest and demonstrations, they bear witness to the passage of time and tide in this mad human drama called life.
After months of sequestration they are the avatars I need to guide my steps through the tumultuous unknown of what is and what is yet to come.
