Notes

Julie Mehretu has developed a distinctive visual language that maps interactions and relationships. Her drawings, paintings and prints encapsulate the intense energy of cities, buildings and structures through layered mark-making in patterns recalling volatile and centrifugal forces. Says the artist: “By combining many types of architectural plans and drawings I tried to create a metaphoric, tectonic view of structural history.”ⁱ

New York-based Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Michigan and obtained her Masters in Fine Art degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. She made headlines recently when her painting Untitled 1 sold for $US1 022 500 at a New York auction in September 2010. She has won numerous prestigious awards and her works are found in major collection such as in the Museum of Modern Art. A print from this edition is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

i. Laurie Firstenberg, "Painting Platform in NY", Flash Art, Vol. XXXV No. 227, November/December 2002, p. 70.

Exhibited

Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, Distant Relatives/Relative Distance, 2006.

Literature

Sophie Perryer (ed), Distant Relatives/Relative Distance, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, 2006, page 36, illustration p 38.