Untitled (Pin-Up No. 5)

'I think one of the most powerful aspects about drawing is how honest and direct the medium is. When I began making watercolour pin-ups I was really not interested in exhibiting or showing them. My personal views as a feminist, as a woman, as a maker of images, seemed to clash with most of the characteristics of these messed up belles. At the same time, the process was therapeutic and self-indulgent, and even a little regressive. I remember I was very nomadic at the time and using the subway. I'm not suggesting that it was a direct lift, but I was obsessed with the defacement of posters and celebrities that seems like a cosmetic social contract between a primal, pseudo-destructive expression on public space, and a convoluted paper doll game. I managed to create an image that was a long chorus of female imagery that hacked away at magazine culture, white standards of beauty, and the obsession with body augmentation. Eventually watercolor became second nature, but the very organic, emotional temperament of the paper prevented me from loading on more liquid and heavier materials.' (The artist quoted in 'Interview Part II: Watercolour Femme Noir Isolde Brielmeier with Wangechi Mutu', in Wengechi Mutu A Shady Promise, Bologna, 2008, p. 53).