Julie Mehretu in "Systems" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[JULIE MEHRETU] My earlier drawings
And paintings had this maplike,

diagrammatic element to them.

As the work has shifted to being

more atmospheric or painterly,

I refrained from trying to explain what's going on in
the paintings as much because

they're not these kind of
rational descriptions or–

or efforts to articulate something
in that way.

I'm not trying to spell out
a story.

I still think you feel the
painting, and the reason you

read the mark is also because
you also feel the mark.

[soft whirring]

- So the two projects that
we're doing in Berlin: one is

a work that's about 21 feet by
85 feet long, and--one painting.

And the other is another project
where we're doing seven

paintings that are small
in comparison, 10x14 each.

[airbrush hissing]

The 21x85-foot painting will
take about a year and a half.

It's really one painting even
though there will be either five

sections or ten sections;

it functions as one painting.

The stretchers that we're using

are not gonna be the stretchers
that we're using on-site.

So these paintings will be taken
off of these stretchers, rolled up,

shipped back, and then
restretched at the site.

- Just watch out for the
column, though.

- The reason that we're in Berlin

is because Julie's studio
in New York can't accommodate

something of this scale.

This project just kind of had
to dictate where it was gonna be

more than we were gonna dictate
where it was gonna be.

It's epic.

This place was three times
bigger than what we envisioned.

So we were able to design all
the walls, do whatever we want

to the spaces, and just have
everything that we needed and wanted.

This is just something that you can't,
unfortunately, get in New York.

So we just took it and
ran with it.

- This project is crazy.

[chuckles]

Everything is new: the size,
the space, just working in

a different country, trying to
get materials.

It's just– it's crazy.

[sprayer hissing]

We all kind of have our own different jobs that we've kind
of developed.

Mostly I do the surfaces.

Julie is all for
experimentations.

I started developing this new
surface: kind of this, like,

acrylic-based, almost like
absorbent paper surface.

So she can actually paint on
these surfaces almost like

paper, but they can be
any scale.

[MEHRETU] January of 2007, I was
working on some new paintings,

and in that process, I had been
doing a bunch of watercolors.

When I was working on the watercolors,

there was this
phenomenon that was happening

in those that I wanted to try
and bring into the painting.

In one painting, it was just not
working.

I kept pushing the color into

this painting where there'd been
this intense amount of drawing

and this intense action between
all these different marks.

And so at one point, I just
started to sand away all the–

all the color that came
into the work.

And at one point when I had
finished sanding it, I turned

around and looked at it,
and it was a finished painting.

That– it was almost–

That's when I called it this
poltergeist in the work.

And it became this absence,

this– the– the erasure itself
became the action.

And it reminded me the caves of

the Buddhas in Afghanistan once
the Taliban removed those

Buddhas: that image of their absence.

It was almost that type of
feeling to this area in this painting.

It felt to me to kind of suggest
a moment in terms of how

sad or pessimistic you can feel
in a political environment and–

or kind of historical situation
that we're in globally.

So it felt like this really,
you know, kind of hopeful

gesture in the painting, for me.

I'm an Ethiopian-American.

My– you know, a big part of my
family is Ethiopian, but I've

been in the states since I was six.

I was raised in Michigan.

I live in New York City,
for the most part.

I'm in Berlin now.

But, I mean, when I move around

the world, I move around the
world as an American.

Being a citizen of the United
States or of any one in the

European Union, you are
a citizen of incredible privilege.

I think anyone who is aware of
that, you have to have some responsibility.

- We basically have a plan
from Julie that has these

multi-layers of shapes and
line work and these forms that

she's gotten from different
areas, and for us to be able

to actually replicate that
successfully, we then have to

take it and just say,
"All right, well, this shape,

this shape, this shape is under
these ten shapes, which are

under these five shapes but are
above these six shapes."

And then layer by layer, we'll

project and, you know, mask and
paint or airbrush or draw,

however we can, get her original
source up onto the surface.

So sometimes it can be a simple

composition that we only have
to break apart into three or

four layers, or sometimes it'll
be a detailed composition

that we have break into
15, 20 sublayers.

[indistinct conversation]

[MEHRETU] For this next show, which is
for the Guggenheim, I'm making

seven paintings that are 10 feet
by 14 feet.

Many parts of the drawing
will also be erased.

So the paintings will build up,
and then a big portion of them

somehow or another will disappear.

So then hopefully, the paintings

will also just interact to talk
about disintegration.

I try to start the group of
paintings with each having their

own kind of architectural
information.

This piece right now, it's just
different views from Google Earth,

you know, of New York City
and Tokyo.

Basically, it's tracing, because

that takes so long, and a lot of
the stuff that the assistants do,

it becomes a ground for my work.

I'm so blessed to have such
a great team.

This would be a nightmare if it
wasn't such a great group of people.

The difficult part is, we have
not that much time.

we have a year from now.

And we have to trust the process

and trust the intuition and
trust– and trust that hopefully

it manifests itself, and we'll–
and that I'll be able to make

these pictures work, I mean,
because after the initial work

is done by everyone else,
it’s up to me to really go in

and draw on all of them
and complete them.

[indistinct conversations]

The large commission has
a really specific point of

departure in terms of what it's
conceptually trying to deal with

if you're gonna make a picture
of that scale and embed that and

locate that in Lower Manhattan,
which is where it's commissioned for,

can you deal, then, with
what Lower Manhattan symbolizes?

It's something that's been
a big part of trying to figure out

who I am and my work,
is trying understand systems.

What you've seen here is only
the first layer of information,

and that first layer of
information is hopefully

something that mimics early maps
from the early silk road

through the evolution of the
marketplace.

Can you actually make a picture
that in some way maps and gives

a picture of this history of the
development of– you know,

capitalist development,
economic system?

Which is absurd. It's–
[chuckles]

- Can you separate it out?
- That I can.

- No, but if they just draw–

Like just draw these
little sections.

-Right.
-You know what I mean?

You can't tell what's what, then.

That whole–
what it does is, it just builds

like these plateaus of space.
it creates a space.

[machine rumbles]
-[speaks indistinctly]

- That kind of drawing,
but I think that if you had it

with no recognizable
buildings whatsoever--
- No.

[JESSICA RANKIN] I think inevitably as an
artist couple, you're gonna

impact each other and influence
each other and...

- It's, like, about, like,
fragmented space,

and then so much of
that is like...

[RANKIN] I mean, we've always worked

that way, ever since we first
started living and working

together, eight years ago now.

We've- -it's just a very organic process,

and that's sort of the
way we lead our lives.

And in New York, our studios
are in our house, so until,

you know, recently– our son
started going to school

recently, but he was in and out
of our studio all day too.

And it's– you know, we look at
each other's work all day.

We sort of give each other
feedback.

We notice something in the
newspaper and mention it.

I mean, it just– it's sort of,
I don't know– it's been–

it's grown organically, and
that's– it really works for us.

[MEHRETU] There is a lot of fluidity
between us.

There are moments where her work

seeps through my work and
in and out of it.

We look at each other's work

more than anybody else's work,
and so that has to happen.

Almost anything in the
environment tends to inform

your work, for me, in one way
or another.

Different studios have done that
for my work as well.

Different– different–

living in different places,
whether it's a place that has

A view or no view, it all–
kind of that space and

the light, all of those elements
affect, for me, a big part of

the way that I end up evolving
with the work.

The thing that keeps me going is
the painting,

And in getting lost in doing
that, language is invented.

A way of working in the language
has evolved for the last–

through the last ten years,
but the paintings have changed

every year through that, slowly,
because painting is slow.

In the end, it's about trying to
make the painting.

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