You're not just this person who's from your own specific experiences, but the collective experience of what makes you who you are because of time.
Julie MehretuWhen you're not a mom, you can get up in the middle of the night, paint, sleep all morning... you can't do that when you have two children!
Julie MehretuThe investigation of making is illuminating towards that moment rather than the other way around, a reversal of the way that I would approach making a painting before. I think that it gets to a richer illumination of the moment, which is what I was trying to do at the beginning but going about it a little backwards.
Julie MehretuI always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it.
Julie MehretuThe earlier, more analytic impulse was to use very rational but kind of absurd techniques or tendenciesโmapping, charting, and architectureโto try and make sense of who I was in my time and space and political environment. But thereโs only so much truth to a theoretical understanding of something.
Julie Mehretu