06/13/2025
Our rug edition with Wangechi Mutu is featured in her show at Villa Borghese and written about so beautifully by Elisa Carollo in the Observer:
Wangechi Mutu's "Bloody Rug" in the Galleria Borghese.
"Continuing this exercise in the exteriorization of visceral sensations, Bloody Rug becomes a silent physical record of violence—an interiorized trauma passed down through generations. The stains of past wounds are not easily reconciled, remaining embedded in the very fabric of identity, both individual and communal. Installed in the same room as Domenichino’s The Hunting of Diana, this work establishes a counter-narrative, confronting the tradition of gendered spectacle. While in the painting, the women are watched by hidden men as an allegory of intrusion, the deep red carpet is marked and stained, refusing to conceal the trauma of gender and racial violence, instead absorbing and exposing its traces. Contained within the rectangular space of this domestic textile, it attempts a silent record of violence—one that already extends beyond the confines of the piece itself."
Wangechi Mutu
Bloody Rug
142 x 103 inches
100% Silk
150 knots/in
Edition of 30 + 4APs
Sustainably hand-knotted in Nepal by artisan weavers
https://observer.com/2025/06/art-exhibition-review-wangechi-mutu-black-soil-poems-galleria-borghese/
