A commission for a five-million-dollar lobby mural at Goldman Sachs in 2007 established Julie Mehretu as a major presence in contemporary art. The resulting work, Mural, covered an area comparable to a tennis court, integrating complex overlays of financial maps, architectural drawings of global banking institutions, and diverse references to the history of painting.
Background and Academic Training
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970, Julie Mehretu relocated to the United States in 1977. She graduated from East Lansing High School before earning a Bachelor of Arts from Kalamazoo College. Her formal arts training culminated at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she completed a Master of Fine Arts in 1997. During this period, she participated in a junior year abroad program at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal.
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Mehretu produces large-scale, multi-layered paintings that utilize architectural diagrams, city grids, and weather charts to analyze sociopolitical change. Her compositions often dispense with traditional depth, favoring a flattened, multi-perspective approach that maps social interaction. In works such as the 2012 Mogamma series, she explores how physical infrastructure mirrors post-colonial history, incorporating elements like Arabic lettering to investigate the intersection of global spaces and cultural memory.
Residencies and Institutional Recognition
Throughout her career, Mehretu has been a participant in several notable artist-in-residence programs, including the CORE Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her tenure as the Guna S. Mundheim Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2007 led to the creation of the Grey Area series. These seven paintings, commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim, utilized an erasing technique to represent the destruction and rebuilding of Berlin’s urban landscape.
Printmaking and Collaborative Projects
Beyond her painting practice, Mehretu is an active printmaker, having engaged with the medium since her time at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has collaborated with several professional studios across the United States, including Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Crown Point Press in San Francisco, Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, and both Derrière L'Étoile Studios and Burnet Editions in New York City.
Fast facts
- Born: 1970, Addis Ababa
- Citizenship: United States
- Education: Rhode Island School of Design, Kalamazoo College
- MacArthur Fellowship: 2005
- Berlin Prize: 2007
- Occupations: Painter, printmaker, architectural drafter
Questions readers ask
What subjects does Julie Mehretu depict in her art?
Her work focuses on abstracted landscapes, city grids, and the architectural history of urban environments to map sociopolitical changes and human movement.
Where has her work been exhibited or commissioned?
She has received major commissions such as the Goldman Sachs lobby mural and has participated in prestigious exhibitions including dOCUMENTA (13) and Performa 17.
Achievements
- Berlin Prize — 2007
- Movement: contemporary art
