Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu (born November 28, 1970) is an Ethiopian American contemporary Visual artist, known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale. Her paintings, drawings, and prints depict the cumulative effects of urban sociopolitical changes. Quotes "I don't think of architectural language as just a metaphor about space, but about spaces of power, about ideas of power.https://www.moma.org/artists/25414-julie-mehretu?hl=en-US#:~:text=American%2C%20born%20Ethiopia%201970%20*%20Works.%20*,power%2C%20about%20ideas%20of%20power.%E2%80%9D%20Julie%20Mehretu. That's what I'm interested in: the space in between, the moment of imagining what is possible and yet not knowing what that is.https://coolhunting.com/culture/interview-artist-julie-mehretu-on-radical-imagination/?hl=en-US#:~:text=Within%20abstraction%20there's%20a%20lot%20that%20I,for%2C%20that%20we%20don't%20have%20words%20for. I work in abstraction because I think within abstraction there's a lot that I can communicate that's visceral and felt, but that we don't have language for, that we don't have words for.https://art21.org/read/julie-mehretu-to-be-felt-as-much-as-read/?hl=en-US#:~:text=So%20if%20a%20building%20is%20from%20Baghdad,things%20that%20people%20build%20are%20your%20landscape%3F Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.https://www.makingtheirmark.org/artists/julie-mehretu?hl=en-US So if a building is from Baghdad or New York or Cairo is not so important... It's more that this information is part of the DNA of the painting—part of the ancestral makeup of what it is..." You're not just this person who's from your own specific experiences, but the collective experience of what makes you who you are because of time." I'll do a whole bunch of marks, and then I'll take away all the ones that I feel are too self-conscious or just don't feel right. So there's selection, and dismissal or erasure, and then conjuring again." One has a strong sense of responsibility in the Iraq war—being an American citizen and being an active agent in a time of really horrible war—especially in these very ancient places that are part of our collective history as human beings While I like many artists, my favorites are not necessarily painters—or they tend not to be painters who are the strongest contemporary artists To Be Felt as Much as Read 2009 My perspective was one of being immersed in contradictions I think there’s some incredible representational painting too, but I’m more interested in the space of what is possible. Julie Mehretu: Something New, Something Else 2 January 2025 Before the Bush Administration and September 11, there was this underlying feeling that the world was progressing in a particular way and different cities were developing and morphing into this kind of unified pseudo-capitalist dream, or something Julie Mehretu by Lawrence Chua 1 April 2005 References