Artists

Julie Mehretu

Press release

With "Kairos / Hauntological Variations," the work of Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa), a celebrated American artist with Ethiopian and Polish roots, makes its first ever appearance in Poland. In the show's title, the ancient Greek notion of kairos—a critical turning point—accompanies Derrida's hauntology—a state where the present is haunted by ghosts of an unresolved past. Mehretu's work reimagines the legacy of American Abstract Expressionism, establishing her as one of the most influential artists of our time—making an impact in contemporary painting for more than two decades now. Her compositions draw on maps, poetry and literature, music and art history, and most prominently, press photography and sociopolitical events; these varied sources act as intellectual and compositional points of departure for her practice in painting, drawing, and experimental printmaking. The exhibition is comprehensive, bringing pieces from different periods to Warsaw: from the analytical diagrams of the late 1990s to drawings and watercolors as well as works on paper and mylar dating to the 2000s, to the most recent, grand paintings whose dense layering acts as a seismographic record of today's global tensions—all displayed in a way that provides deeper insight into the artist's practice. The way to understand who we are, what we are, and how we are right now is very abstract, confused, and uncertain, says Julie Mehretu. There's a lot of contradictions that we are experiencing and existing within. We are living in complicated, abstract times. Among other series, "Archive Pages" (1997) are included in the show: rarely presented to the public, these works on paper attest to Mehretu's unique, longstanding usage of source imagery. A collection of photographs, clippings, maps, and marks withdrawn from circulation through the use of xerography, it forms an atlas of tensions at work between intimacy and communality, between document and memory. This working method continues to resonate in her most recent abstract pieces, referencing major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the devastating fire that broke out in the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro on the night of September 2, 2018. Disasters count among Mehretu's recurring themes—among capitalism, globalism, migration, and displacement. "TRANSpaintings," exhibited in aluminum scaffold-like sculptures ("Upright Brackets") by Nairy Baghramian, are essential to the show in Warsaw. The series draws from mass media of recent history, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Translucent and double-sided, the pieces bear both the extremism of the represented events and "this other light that still can emanate, or is still possible," as Mehretu said in 2023. The exhibition features an expanded chronology that reflects Julie Mehretu's ongoing practice of collecting ephemera from key events that have shaped both our contemporary world and ourselves. In her archive these historical fragments live alongside personal affects—her children's toys, rocks from beaches across the world, and souvenirs from her travels—all serving to create a living atlas which reverberates throughout Mehretu's work. Julie Mehretu's multilayered works are true to the pace, ambiguity, and complexity of life today—the condition of crisis and the ever-present feeling of danger permeate her abstractions. But instead of promising easy answers and relief, the artist encourages viewers to experience the world attentively, in all of its tensions and contradictions. It is an invitation to transcend short-lived solutions and overarching, simplified narratives. Julie Mehretu (b. 1970 in Addis Ababa) lives and works in New York. She is best known for her large-scale, multilayered paintings in which the languages of mapmaking, urban planning, digital media, and abstraction come together. Evacuated from Ethiopia to the United States at the age of seven, Mehretu relocated with her family to East Lansing, Michigan. Her education includes Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (Senegal, 1990–91), Kalamazoo College, Michigan (BA, 1992) and The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence (MFA, 1997). In 1997, while attending the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, she began introducing architectural drawings into her compositions. Mehretu moved to New York City in 1999 and in 2000 was accepted into the Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Here Mehretu was featured in "Freestyle" (curated by Thelma Golden) in 2001, a show that launched a whole new generation of artists by establishing the "post-black" category of African-American art and sparking widespread discussion around expressions of identity as well as ways of presenting contemporary artistic pursuits outside conventional taxonomies. Following her residency, Mehretu joined The Project, a gallery in Harlem founded by the art critic Christian Haye. Mehretu has received many prestigious awards including The MacArthur Award (2005), the Berlin Prize: Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship at The American Academy in Berlin, Germany (2007), Department of State Medal of Arts Award (2015) and in 2025, she was awarded the Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Named one of TIME's 100 most influential people of 2020. Titled "Uprising of the Sun," she created an 85×25 foot glass mural for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois, installed in 2024. Other large painting commissions include "Mural" (2009) housed inside the lobby of the Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City and the diptych "HOWL, eon (I, II)" in the Botta atrium of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017). In November 2019 a career survey opened of Mehretu's work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and then traveled to The High Museum, Atlanta (2020), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021), and The Walker Museum of Art, Minneapolis (2021). "Julie Mehretu: Ensemble" opened in 2024 at the Palazzo Grassi-Pinault Collection, Venice and in November 2024 the first exhibition of Mehretu's work to be shown in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, entitled "Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory." On May 10, 2025 a solo exhibition opened at K21 in Dusseldorf, Germany, "Julie Mehretu: KAIROS / HAUNTOLOGICAL VARIATIONS" which has traveled here to Warsaw's MSN. Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The National Academy of Design and the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. She sits on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a trustee and alumna of the American Academy in Berlin, a Global Council Member at Zeitz MOCAA, and is co-founder and board member of Denniston Hill.