Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Home Page
  • The Journal
    • Current Issue
    • Forthcoming in Signs
    • Recently Published Issues
    • Virtual Issues
      • Signs Resources on Abortion and Reproductive Justice
      • Feminist Resources for #TheResistance
      • Signs@40: Feminist Scholarship through Four Decades
      • Visibility and Visuality: Reframing Gender in the Middle East, North Africa, and Their Diasporas
    • Art
      • Featured Artist
      • Cover Art Gallery
      • Visibility and Visuality Artists
    • Lesbian Studies, Now : Call for Papers
    • For the Classroom
      • Signs on the Syllabus
        • WGSS Teaching Resources
        • Feminist Practices
      • Films for the Feminist Classroom
  • Feminist Public Intellectuals Project
    • Short Takes
      • The Patriarchs
      • Lady Justice
      • Bad Sex
      • The Women’s House of Detention
      • In Defense of Witches
      • Abolition. Feminism. Now.
      • The Right to Sex
      • Believing
      • Against White Feminism
      • Still Mad
      • Controlling Women
      • Period. End of Sentence.
      • Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again
      • Mediocre
      • Entitled
      • Boys and Sex
      • Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
      • Reckoning
      • No Visible Bruises
      • Maid
      • Unapologetic
      • Rage Becomes Her
      • In a Day’s Work
      • Eloquent Rage
      • Crash Override
      • What Happened
      • Destruction of Hillary Clinton
      • Unwanted Advances
      • Feminist Fight Club
      • In the Darkroom
      • We Were Feminists Once
      • All the Single Ladies
      • My Life on the Road and Notorious RBG
      • Unfinished Business
      • Pro
      • Bad Feminist
    • Feminist Frictions
      • Radical Feminism
      • The Field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
      • Free Speech
      • Title IX
      • Sex Work
      • Identity Politics
      • Celebrity Feminism
      • Trigger Warnings
      • Affirmative Consent
    • Ask a Feminist
      • Reproduction in the Age of Epigenetics, a Conversation with Rene Almeling, Sarah Richardson, and Natali Valdez
      • Jennifer Fluri Discusses the Gender Politics of the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan with Sandra McEvoy
      • Patricia Williams Discusses Rage and Humor as an Act of Disobedience with Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra
      • Eesha Pandit and Paula Moya Discuss Activism and the Academy with Carla Kaplan and Suzanna Walters
      • Byllye Avery Discusses the Past and Future of Reproductive Justice with Susan Reverby
      • Deborah Anker Discusses Gender and US Asylum Law with Aziza Ahmed
      • Soraya Chemaly Discusses Feminist Rage with Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra
      • Cynthia Enloe, Agnieszka Graff, Ratna Kapur, and Suzanna Danuta Walters on Gender and the Rise of the Global Right
      • Catharine A. MacKinnon and Durba Mitra on Sexual Harassment in the Age of #MeToo
      • Dolores Huerta and Rachel Rosenbloom on Gender and Immigrant Rights
      • Michael Kimmel and Lisa Wade on Toxic Masculinity
      • Angela P. Harris on Gender and Gun Violence
      • Susan J. Carroll on Gender and Electoral Politics
      • Cathy Cohen and Sarah Jackson on Black Lives Matter
  • About & Guidelines
    • About
    • Masthead
    • History
    • For Authors
      • Author Guidelines
      • Submitting a Manuscript
      • Reprints and Permissions
      • Lesbian Studies, Now : Call for Papers
  • #FeministResistance

Julie Mehretu – Sing, Unburied, Sing (J.W.) (2018)

Tweet
Share

Julie Mehretu, Sing, Unburied, Sing (J.W.), 2018, Ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 120 in. (274.3 x 304.8 cm). This work is featured on the Spring 2020 issue of Signs. © 2018 by Julie Mehretu. Photo: Tom Powell Imaging. Private Collection. Permission to reprint may be obtained only from the artist.

 

Artist Statement
The past five years have seen a significant shift in the development of Julie Mehretu’s paintings; in place of meticulous architectural renderings, the starting point for the most recent series of works is the immediacy and urgency of photojournalism. Contemporary news photographs, of global events ranging from the riots in Charlottesville and Grenfell Tower fire in London, are blurred and abstracted before being airbrushed onto the canvas, leaving the source image as a ghostly presence behind the artist’s expressive, insistent mark-making. Like her earlier paintings, these new works are visually explosive, layered canvases, with a calligraphic line that has itself evolved to be looser and more gestural.  These marks, often guided compositionally by the background image, function as an act of resistance, bearing witness to the artist’s body and movement to focus on the role each of us play in helping imagine a new world.

Artist Biography
Julie Mehretu is a world-renowned painter; born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970; who lives and works in New York City and Berlin.  She received a master’s of fine art with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu is a recipient of many awards, including the MacArthur Award (2005) and the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award (2015). Mehretu makes large-scale, gestural paintings that are built up through layers of acrylic paint on canvas overlaid with mark-making using pencil, pen, ink and paint. Mehretu’s work conveys a layering and compression of time, space, and place and a collapse of art-historical references, from the dynamism of the Italian futurists and the geometric abstraction of Malevich to the enveloping scale of abstract expressionist color field painting. She has shown her work extensively in international and national solo and group exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections around the world. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

Tweet
Share

Search the site:

Key Links

  • Submit a Manuscript
  • Guidelines for Authors
  • Signs Archives on University of Chicago Press
  • Subscribe to Signs
  • Library Recommendation Form
  • Sitemap

Contact Signs

  • (617) 373-5837
  • signs@northeastern.edu
  • Contact Us

(c) 2012 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

 

Loading Comments...