Julie Mehretu: KAIROS / Hauntological Variations

The Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa) is one of the most influential painters working today. This first mid-career survey in Germany presents nearly 100 works expressing the full range of her artistic practice, from her early, urban-inspired line drawings of the 1990s to her most recent, spectacular abstract paintings. Also included are time-based media inspired by Mehretu’s work, such as a music album, as well as documentary and video works. The exhibition also explores Mehretu’s creative process. She often begins with media images of political events and historical sites, which she translates into abstract compositions layered with notations, overpaintings, and maskings. Through a selection of Mehretu’s source material and works on paper, some of which are being shown publicly for the first time, the K21 exhibition contextualizes the conceptual thinking behind the artist’s work.

Mehretu was born in 1970 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and fled with her family to Michigan, USA, in 1977 after the beginning of the military dictatorship under Mengistu Haile Mariam. There she began her art studies at Kalamazoo College in the late 1980s, spent a year at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1997. Interrupted by working stays in Berlin and artist residencies in various parts of the United States, Mehretu has lived and worked in New York since the late 1990s.

Last year, after a long period of planning, two prestigious major projects were announced. Mehretu designed a more than twenty-five-meter-high window for the Obama Presidential Center. She created the twentieth BMW Art Car and, together with the BMW Group, will head the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC), a network for young filmmakers in five African countries, for the next two years. The maquette of the BMW Art Car can be seen in the exhibition, and a film program later in the year will show contributions by the artists involved in AFMAC. Her work has been exhibited at, among others, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Louisiana Museum in Humblebaek, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Mori ArtMuseum in Tokyo. She has also been represented at the Venice, São Paulo, Busan, Sydney, and Gwanju biennials, as well as dOCUMENTA (13), and has received major honors such as the MacArthur Award and the Medal of Arts Award.

Following exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hannover in 2007 and the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin in 2009, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is proud to present KAIROS / Hauntological Variations, Mehretu’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany in over fifteen years. Featuring works from nearly thirty years, the exhibition demonstrates how, as a painter, she relentlessly counteracts every crisis with her inventive spirit.

The exhibition is curated by Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of K20K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Sebastian Peter, Assistant Curator.

Organized by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, in collaboration with Pinault Collection, following the exhibition Julie Mehretu. Ensemble, presented at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, in 2024.

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