Julie Mehretu
As part of the Sydney International Art Series – now in its 15th iteration at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) – Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu receives her first major survey in the Southern hemisphere, for which she has created 10 new paintings.
Image credit: Julie Mehretu, They departed for their own country another way (a 9 x 9 x 9 hauntology), Installation view, White Cube, Bermondsey, 2023. Photo: Theo Christelis. Courtesy and © Julie Mehretu and White Cube
Curated by Suzanne Cotter and Jane Devery, Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory brings together more than 80 works ranging from 1995 to the present day. Renowned for large-scale abstract paintings encompassing surface layering, fluid calligraphic-like forms, signifiers and symbols, the artist also has a substantial output in drawing and printmaking.
Cotter has known Mehretu for about 14 years and has been working towards the exhibition since her appointment as MCA Director in 2022. “The works on paper are very important to the exhibition as they are intended to offer visitors a survey of Mehretu’s visual and painterly language so as to understand the toolbox of mark making she has been developing for over 30 years, beginning with her very early drawings,” Cotter remarks. “They are also intended to show the interconnectedness of Mehretu’s practice as a painter and a printmaker. Remarkable etchings and aquatints will be presented, including a major new suite produced in California at the legendary Gemini Studios.”
The eldest of three children born to an Ethiopian father (a geography professor) and an American mother (a teacher), the themes of displacement, migration, conflict and social unrest present in Mehretu’s pictorial language were informed by her childhood. In 1974, the Marxist-Leninist military junta known as the Derg seized power in Ethiopia. By 1977, the country was under the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who enacted what is now called the ‘Ethiopian Red Terror’. The Ogaden War (1977–78) with Somalia over the disputed border region, and a guerrilla campaign waged... Subscribe to read all articles in full
