Description
Abstract mapping and layered drawings by Julie Mehretu (born 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), part of the "Get Lost" exhibition. Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American abstract painter and printmaker whose large-scale canvases layer architectural renderings, aerial views of urban grids, maps, charts, and expressive marks into densely intersected compositions. As she explains: "The earlier, more analytic impulse was to use very rational but kind of absurd techniques — mapping, charting, and architecture — to try and make sense of who I was in my time and space and political environment." Her work conjures turbulent atmospheres and dense social networks, creating what Art21 describes as "calligraphic complexity." She studied at RISD and her work is held by MoMA, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim.
