Julie Mehretu was born in Ethiopia of an American mother and Ethiopian father, and grew up in Michigan before studying at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States. She then moved to New York, where she began creating imaginary maps whose spatial arrangements are inspired by real architecture or buildings, such as those that exist in American, African, or European cities. Often combining several techniques (brush, pencil, pen, quill), she composes her works like strata in motion, by superimposing individual overlays, arranged as a multitude of colourful staggered shapes and rippling lines. She also produces energetic and explosive drawings, from which emerges an army of dots and hatchings that the artist describes as “characters” in motion. Both ordered and chaotic, her architectures become utopian visions that resurrect the city of the Futurists, while reviving the creative and liberating urban planning advocated by the Situationists. But, far from confining herself to the idea of the ideal city, her work remains solidly grounded in reality and brings critical scrutiny to the contemporary world. Thus, her painting The Seven Acts of Mercy (2004), inspired by the Caravaggio work of the same name, highlights the necessity of political struggle. Similarly, her series of engravings entitled Heavy Weather (2005) refer to the hurricane Katrina disaster. In her own words, she explains that she is “interested in the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity”. She thus provides a fertile and invigorating examination of the place of the individual in a globalised world. Her graffiti and comic book inspired aesthetic has earned her a place in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York. She has been featured in a number of solo exhibitions, namely at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2003). She has also participated in many biennales and important group exhibitions, including Africa Remix at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2005.
Johanna RENARD
