Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. MacArthur Genius-winning artist Julie Mehretu is known for creating large abstract, multi-layered pieces that explore themes of history and globalism. It's the 10th anniversary of her being commissioned to do a massive paintings that would hang in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. You may remember the Whitney did a mid-career retrospective of her work in 2018. Now, she has a new exhibition, featuring work from 2024 through 2026. It's titled Our Days Like a Shadow (a Non-Abiding Hauntology), her seventh solo exhibition.

The show's title references a verse from King David's prayer and the Buddhist concept of non-abidance. It takes up three floors, and you'll see pieces liberated from the walls held by Iranian-born German artist Nairy Baghramian's upright brackets called Structural Embraces.

Our Days Like a Shadow (a Non-Abiding Hauntology) opens at the Marian Goodman Gallery at 385 Broadway next Tuesday, April 14th. Julie Mehretu joins us here in studio to give us a preview of the exhibition. It is so nice to see you.

Julie Mehretu: Thank you, so nice to be here.

Alison Stewart: Your show includes some of your more recent paintings, trans Paintings, and a new cycle called Black Paintings up on the top floor. We'll talk about those in a minute. What were the concepts you were thinking of as you developed these new works of art?

Julie Mehretu: These works, like all the works that I've made and that I'm constantly trying to negotiate, is who I am and what's going on in our world. They're digesting the world and digesting the time that we're living through.

They're also a further investigation in the mark making that I've been working with for the last 30 years. I think it's this constant evolution of ideas, and how that can materially manifest. At the same time, it's always made in the context of the social reality and political reality we live in because it's hard. That's the context that we exist and move and process the world through.

Alison Stewart: How do you not, right?

Julie Mehretu: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Alison Stewart: Can you tell us a little bit about the title of the show?

Julie Mehretu: Yes. There's a lot in these paintings that are about perception, or not even about perception, but they're hard to perceive or hard to grasp. There's an ungraspableness in a lot of the works, or they're constantly mutating and shifting. I think we're really in this very vertiginous time, I feel like, especially since maybe 2016 or something like that, 2015. Since early rumblings of Brexit and Trump.

We had a real shift in how things were happening and how we were thinking through things. The world of the body politic has shifted a lot during that time. Things are happening so rapidly, or we're consuming things that happen so rapidly that things feel like you're already in the past of something as it's in the process of becoming.

As we were watching January 6th happen, you could already understand what an aftermath would be of that, and that we had to have the following days because there was these ballots that need to be counted, for example. There was always this constant. There's this--

We're living in this time where we understand how quickly things are happening, and yet these are major, violently intense times. We're constantly ricocheting between these realities. Whether it was the pandemic, whether these very different political realities.

We're going through these different wars we've experienced in the last four years. We're in this moment where things are passing so quickly. At the same time, it's really hard to make sense of it. We're constantly feeling the past as well as the cycling of the past. What we've studied in the past come up to us and bubble up in the current moment.

We don't really necessarily have a clear grasp on that or an understanding of how to make sense of that. I think you have a lot of people who, the desire to make sense of that by grabbing onto certain political ideas or certain historic ways of responding to moments.

I think we're in a moment where we really have to invent something else, where the language of the past is not enough, where the crimes of the past are not the same as the crimes at this moment, where what it means to be part of a pan-global world is a very different reality. We're much more engaged with one another.

How do we ask these questions? Yet there's so much that we can learn from the past and that we have to. We live that way. I think all of that came up. It goes back, again. It's like the old books, the old stories, the old myths. We go to those a lot in creative times. The title comes from the Bible. These ideas of non-abidance is one part of the title and the hauntology.

Our day is like a shadow. Shadows are these things that are really material, but also as immaterial as they are material. They're part of the physical and world we live in in terms of light and created by that. At the same time, they can shift and disappear within the moment that light disappears. I think you see that in the street, walking through the street all the time.

The concept that we're here in this very fleeting way and with impermanence, and yet this is very real, what we're experiencing. I think it's the profundity of that. At the same time, I think, underneath that, this idea that we're constantly being haunted by the past, that's not really the past and not already the future. There's this constant different understanding of time.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because I went yesterday and I saw a gentleman who walked behind your painting. It was a beautiful, bright day, and the painting changed as he walked behind it. After hearing your answer, I'm like, "That makes sense to me."

Julie Mehretu: Yes.

Alison Stewart: By what you said, how things change, and how the shadows can change in the work.

Julie Mehretu: Yes, exactly. The works are made with these shadows. They're blurred images. That's what you have in blurred images, are these photographic blurs of shadows, and light, and color. All of that happens because of what happens with the way that light operates, including the different pigments I'm working with, these interference pigments that are made with mica, and they respond to light differently.

When you look at a painting or look at one of those pigments from one perspective, you see an orange, for example, and from another perspective, it's a green or gold. That impermanence, that inability to deal with fixity, like the fixed idea of what our vision wants to do and how our brain wants to understand.

We want to see and understand, and somehow, read an image. That's not how these paintings work. That's not how we experience the world. There's so much in the space of unknowing and in the space of illegibility that I think is really interesting, and part of what I was really thinking about in the show.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting, as you were talking about how the past few years. Sometimes I find myself saying my age is three or four years younger because of COVID. Time has kind of expanded. I'm like, "Wait, I'm not that age. I'm this age." How does time work?

Julie Mehretu: We just have the excuse of COVID. I think this happens all the time as people get older.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I'm wondering, is time an issue when you're painting?

Julie Mehretu: Yes. These paintings take a lot of time. Some of them I can work on very quickly. I can have intense creative spurts. There are times where I really do sit with them for a long time. The process of creative work in the studio, it's a time-based process. It takes a lot of time. You can't rush things.

One of the most important skills is to learn how to be patient and await for the arrival or understanding of what one is doing. That can be very hard, learning how to pay attention and really hone that skill in the studio while also being patient and present. Time is really important to that.

I think, as you get older and more experienced with that, one can become more and more comfortable with that. I've noticed that with myself, and I feel-- Time is part of-- I think what we're going through, we're going through something where we want this to resolve, and we want to move past this. We know in the past that people have moved past really difficult times.

We live with that history embedded in us, especially in this country, and with the horrors of the past and the possibilities and the inventiveness of all of that. We're in this moment where we want, but how do we resolve these, especially in these moments of incredible creativity, too, where new technologies and new forms of thinking are coming to the fore at the same time as these reverting to war. It feels like in 2026, we're going-

Alison Stewart: That's your answer?

Julie Mehretu: Yes. That's your answer? Exactly.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to Julie Mehretu about her new show, Our Days Like a Shadow (a Non-Abiding Hauntology). It opens on April 14th. It'll run through June 6 at the Marian Goodman Gallery. Could you tell me about these upright brackets and the way this show is presented?

Julie Mehretu: Yes. I've been working on this group of trans paintings. They're translucent. They're sheets of acrylic paint that are on a monofilament screen, so you can really see completely through the painting. They're not transparent, but they are translucent, so the light, like you said, you see the shadows. I was very interested in how the choreography of the audience will affect the perspective in the painting.

That came from my own shadow in the paintings that I was working on before that. I showed up at Marian Goodman Gallery in my last show in 2021 or 2020, whenever that was, pandemic times. I saw my own shadow in the painting as I was working on them. I became really interested in the blurred shadows and the interaction of the shadows, which you mentioned earlier as well.

I was thinking for a long time, Nairy Baghramian is, I think, a phenomenal sculptor, one of the most important of our time. I think she's a good friend. I had seen one of her exhibitions at the Nasher in Texas, was really blown away by her work and what and her and the background.

We have a very similar history in terms of leaving our countries of origin, the reasons we left. She's Iranian, I'm Ethiopian. Both of these countries went through these kinds of revolutions that really became co-opted and undermined these countries and the stability of these countries.

The way that she has dealt with her history of-- She has this history of dealing with the brace and some form of holding. There's always aspects of care and structure. Her sculpture has this inherent in it. She's been working with this language for a long time.

After I saw this exhibition, I had been talking about Lina Bo Bardi and other forms of display that could do this. What became very clear is, Nairy would be this amazing artist because she has both this way of working with the material and letting the material do its work.

At the same time, there's some other image in that that is, that becomes very apparent. These aren't just the extension. They're not frames. They're not just the extension of a wall or frame. They're not four things holding something up, but because of one arm, they feel like they can pivot, they feel like they can go into motion. They feel like animatronic beings or agents in the space.

That becomes something very different. It gives these paintings and the sculpture a different form of agency. Rather than just being these transparent paintings that you're looking at, they become these other beings, these other agents in the space.

The painting, then, is not just this sculpture or this painting, but it becomes this skin that's held in this structure, this clamped, presented structure, like a kid who's trying to hide from people that they're supposed to meet. The mom holds you out with your arm, "Oh, say hi. Say hi. You have to be right here. I'm holding you front and present."

Alison Stewart: On the first floor, there's this large-scale work on black canvas. It almost feels like you're looking at the cosmos. The colors flash as you walk by. What kind of paint did you use on that?

Julie Mehretu: That's the interference pigment on various levels. I found some in Berlin when I was working on the first black paintings in my friend, Tacita Dean's, studio. It was an accident to find this paint. It was. I didn't have my glasses on, and I thought I was buying silver paint. Turned out it was silver violet that did this flip-flop interference.

I would never have bought it if I knew that, but it's a good thing that I didn't have my glasses on. Anyway, I started working with this material. At first, I thought it was a mistake in the bottle, and then I realized. Then we started to research in the studio different forms of interference pigment. It's used for cars, bicycles, and motorcycles. This material is used for different materials in the world.

I had never thought of using it for painting. I became very interested in its exact, the way that it worked on the black ground. It doesn't do this on other grounds. It's really on the black ground, where, if you do it on white, you won't see this on other colors.

When you see the black, it allows for you to really experience this shift in tonality mark. The marks either disappear, reappear, appear another color. The fixed look, the fixed gaze, your perception is completely constantly adjusted by where you are and your relation to this painting.

Because of the scale of the painting, that really then brings up another issue. You have this really different-- Usually, paintings of that scale are somewhat of this. In the history of Western art, there's an authoritarian dynamic that happens with a painting or monumental.

Alison Stewart: I'm here. This is it. This is the way it's going to be.

Julie Mehretu: Yes. There's something about that sovereign view or something. I think in this, that really gets dismantled. It's always subjective. It's how one experiences the painting. Even if you're right next to me, we don't see the same painting at the same time. Your body and whether you're close or far, and how you see those marks, really changes.

I've always been really interested in that point of view or that perspectival change, and how these paintings shatter into many other paintings, and what does that mean in the experience of painting? For me, playing with this pigment and really pushing it, that is the cosmos, in a sense. It sets the stage for the rest of the show downstairs.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. When you look at the paintings, I'm curious, how much were you involved with where they're placed?

Julie Mehretu: Yes, very carefully. I was involved in all of that.

Alison Stewart: Tell me more about that. I took pictures, and I was like, "Oh, these two frames, and this is an arch, and there's a picture there, and then these two frame it nicely." I'm like, "That can't be an accident." I just need to know more.

Julie Mehretu: No, there's a lot. Yes, there's a lot. There's a lot. There's a whole choreography, especially when the paintings leave the wall. When you see the upright brackets from the side, you only see this aluminum structure. One is not even aware of it. It could be a painting, it could be just a beam, a sculpture, and then you turn.

When you know the paintings, then you know that that's what's happening, but because of the pivot, these paintings don't need to be shown on the similar plane. They really dance or perform in the space. I really did think about the archways and the conversations between the two galleries.

These paintings also in conversation with one another, and how you see one on its side relating to another, the different types of axes that are presented. It actually led into a desire to work with a choreographer and dancers, which we'll be doing later in the exhibition. It became out of actually installing the first group of trans paintings in London at White Cube.

Alison Stewart: These live events that are going to happen at the gallery, tell me more about those?

[00:15:54] Julie Mehretu: Through my partner, Ariel Osterweis, I was able to meet John Jaspers, this choreographer. I had been thinking about this even before I met Ari a while ago. I was really interested in what type of choreographer, what type of dance, what type of movement.

She's a dance scholar. I met her and started to really investigate. That's interesting how that happens in a life, how people come into your life, and you learn. I was really taken by John Jasper's work because of his felt this commitment to abstraction, but it's also very formal.

There's this formal, intentional way of looking at the body and how it moves. It feels intuitive, but it's very choreographed, very planned out. In fact, he was in the gallery yesterday with a measuring tape, measuring between things to really get this right.

Alison Stewart: That's exciting.

Julie Mehretu: Yes. He's been working on it a year as well, with these dancers, different phrases and different-- I've learned an enormous amount. We've had the dancers in the studio for rehearsals. They also have been rehearsing in different places.

I'm really excited to see what happens when you actually move through this tripartite space, level to level with. Each of the floors has a really different color palette, attitude, sensory feeling, or experience. I think that the dance and what happens with the sound will really affect or animate that in a very different way.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with artist Julie Mehretu. Her new exhibition, Our Days Like a Shadow (a Non Abiding Hauntology), which opens at the Marianne Goodman Gallery at 385 Broadway, it opens next Tuesday. The gallery's owner, she recently passed away.

Julie Mehretu: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What do you want people to know about her, Marian Goodman?

Julie Mehretu: Marian, she was really an incredible force. I just feel so lucky and blessed that I had the experience of knowing her and that I could learn from her. She took very seriously the time it takes to make art, what it means to be an artist, and what--

There's a big industry around the art world. There's a lot of commerce, and there's a lot of exchange, and there's a lot of different dynamics that happen. Marian was very committed to what it takes to make the work and what it takes to present that property, and then how to nurture that work, how to maintain it, how to protect it.

What I learned from her was that, just because an opportunity is there doesn't mean you're going to do this. It has to make sense for the artist. She's the one who made the commission happen with SFMoma. She really handled that in an extraordinary way. The way that she's handled everything since I started working with her, I learned an enormous amount. She's going to be so missed. We are having stamps made that say "Marian is here," so.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's amazing. That's lovely.

Julie Mehretu: She will be with us one way or another.

Alison Stewart: This is a funny question. When you're putting together a show like this, how do you know when you're done?

Julie Mehretu: Yes, that is a good question. I knew when I had too much work. I thought I had too much work. There were some paintings we were not able to install that had made the last couple of years that I envisioned as part of the show.

In the end, I needed to get a certain amount of work done that, as bodies of work, that then I wanted to really experiment in the space to see what works. It's my first time showing in this space. The gallery has only been there for a few years.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Julie Mehretu: It was a biggie. I worked with the model a lot. I kept changing it. I tried so many different variations of how I would install it, and then really reduced it to this. I think, in terms of when you're done with a painting, that's a really hard question or hard thing to answer because most of the time, you arrive there and you have the time to really understand that it's finished.

I like to describe it to people as, when you're taking a photograph of somebody, and you know that your iPhone can't really focus or your mobile phone can't focus, and then all of a sudden it does, and you're like, "Okay, it's focused. Time to click." It's an intuitive feeling where it comes together, and nothing's really nagging me about it or, you know.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you just know.

Julie Mehretu: Yes.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Our Days Like a Shadow (a Non-Abiding Hauntology). It is by artist Julie Mehretu. It's opening at the Marian Goodman Gallery at 385 Broadway, next Tuesday, April 14th. Congratulations on the show.

Julie Mehretu: Thank you so much, and thank you for taking the time to see it and talk to me about it.

Alison Stewart: That is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.

 

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