JULIE MEHRETU (b. 1970, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia) lives and works in New York.
Julie Mehretu's work incorporates the visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms in her depictions of fictional landscapes. Simultaneously engaged with formal concerns of color and line, as well as the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, the artist is interested in the multifaceted layers of place, space and time that impact the formation of personal and community identity.
Mehretu has had solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein, Hannover; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain; and St. Louis Art Museum, MO. She has participated in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Istanbul Biennial (2006); among others. Most recent shows include the Simon Fraser University Gallery, B.C. (2007) and the current City Sitings organized by the Detroit Institute of Art, traveling to the Williams College Museum of Art, MA and the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Mehretu is represented by The Project Gallery in New York.