Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present You Begin to See the Signs, the gallery’s third solo exhibition with artist duo Mwangi Hutter. Opening March 4, 2025, the show coincides with Panafrica Across Chicago, a citywide initiative organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, celebrating the depth and range of artistic practices from across the African continent and its diasporas.
With an oeuvre that spans performance, video, sound and installation, You Begin to See the Signs, marks a return to wood and stonework in Mwangi Hutter’s practice. Their current use of wood, stone, limestone, and granite reflects a focus on the cohesion of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air – whose varied interactions birth distinct natural forms, each shaped by time and force. Attuned to these inherent rhythms and constraints of indigenous material, they approach creation as an act of listening and response, engaging both the body and the mind as they test the limits of strength and tension.
Through their sculptural work Scattering Winds, 2025, Mwangi Hutter engages time as both a medium and a performance, as the choreography of carving functions as a performance of inquiry, endurance and resistance —a negotiation between external force and material fragility. As trees are shaped by their environment, and limestone is formed through water’s erosion, both hold the imprint of time, and transform through continuous interactions with their surroundings—a process that parallels Hutter’s engagement with the environment and temporality in their Hutter’s time-based and performance works.
You Begin to See the Signs centers the notion of rupture and transformation. A gilded wooden exterior splits in half, to reveal a white and black interior, establishing a physical and metaphorical break. As such, this division generates two individual entities, bound in intimate relation to one another, evoking broader themes of individuality, collectively, separation, and the search for unity within society –– a recurrent theme in the work of the artists. Through their sculptural interventions, Mwangi Hutter invites viewers to reconsider how environments, identity, and time shape our collective experience.
As part of Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Mwangi Hutter’s Static Drift, which was recently acquired into the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, will simultaneously be on view in the museum’s galleries at Regenstein Hall, until March 30, 2025.
You Begin to See the Signs will be on view at Mariane Ibrahim Chicago from March 4 - April 16, 2025.
