509 Burcham Dr, East Lansing, MI 48823, United States
East Lansing High School
Dakar, Senegal
Cheikh Anta Diop University
1200 Academy St, Kalamazoo, MI 49006, United States
Kalamazoo College
2 College St, Providence, RI 02903, United States
Rhode Island School of Design
725 Vineland Pl, Minneapolis, MN 55403, United States
Walker Art Center
2002
Julie Mehretu, 2002
509 Burcham Dr, East Lansing, MI 48823, United States
East Lansing High School
Dakar, Senegal
Cheikh Anta Diop University
1200 Academy St, Kalamazoo, MI 49006, United States
Kalamazoo College
2 College St, Providence, RI 02903, United States
Rhode Island School of Design
725 Vineland Pl, Minneapolis, MN 55403, United States
Walker Art Center
Julie Mehretu was born in 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a daughter of Assefa Mehretu, an Ethiopian college professor, and Doree Mehret, an American teacher. In 1977, the family moved to the United States and settled down in East Lansing, Michigan.
Initially, Julie studied at East Lansing High School. During the period from 1990 to 1991, she attended Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal. In 1992, she got her Bachelor of Arts degree at Kalamazoo College. Some time later, Mehretu continued her studies and in 1997, she graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with Master of Fine Arts degree with honors.
In 1999, Julie Mehretu settled down in New York, where she established herself as one of the most exciting painters of the United States. She creates large scale prints, drawings and paintings, that use heavy layering to create Abstract imagery from patterns and architectural photographs.
During a residency at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 2003, she worked with thirty high school girls from East Africa. In 2007, Julie led a monthlong residency program with 40 art students from Detroit public high schools.
In 2010, Mehretu held her first major solo exhibition, entitled "Grey Area", at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her work was also included in the "In Praise of Doubt" exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in the summer of 2011. The following year, in 2012, she exhibited her works at documenta 13 in Kassel. In 2014, Mehretu participated in "The Divine Comedy. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists", curated by Simon Njami.
Currently, Julie divides her time between New York and Berlin.
Julie Mehretu is famous for her printmaking and painting with a strong note of Abstraction. One of her most famous works is the 80-foot-wide mural, located in Goldman Sachs tower, entitled "Mural". Her painting "Untitled 1" is also popular and was sold for over $1,000,000 at Sotheby’s auction house in 2010.
The artist received numerous grants and awards, including Pat Hearn Inaugural Award (2001), Penny McCall Foundation Grant (2002), MacArthur Fellowship (2005, 2009), United States Department of State Medal of Arts (2015) and others.
Julie's works are kept in the collections of different museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and others.
Quotations:
"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 always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it."
"I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction."
"People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them."
"I don't ever work in a way where something is an illustration of an event, but when something is occurring at the same time I see it as very informed by that."
"When you're not a mom, you can get up in the middle of the night, paint, sleep all morning... you can't do that when you have two children!"
"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."
"I'm not trying to spell out a story. I still think you feel the painting, and the reason you read the mark is because you also feel the mark."
Jessica Rankin is Julie's life partner.
