Julie Mehretu’s art was intriguing to me because we briefly learned about her last semester in FNAR123, additionally, her art reminds me of the pieces I see in DRL. I find the collaboration between math and art to be very satisfying and aesthetically pleasing, because they often look as though they were generated by machines as the byproduct of calculations. They look like pieces put together from the scraps and remains of analogue computers’ punch cards.
I noticed that in both pieces above, there are elements brought to the front and more muted shapes that resemble guidelines in the back. Defined shapes such as circles, triangles, and lines make up the majority of both pieces, though Mehretu’s piece contains more varied textures/strokes.
Mehretu was born to an Ethiopian and American household. Her family left Ethiopia in 1977 to escape political turmoil, and as such, many of Mehretu’s pieces express global changes in society and politics over a long period of time.
The characters in my maps plotted, journeyed, evolved, and built civilizations. I charted, analyzed, and mapped their experience and development: their cities, their suburbs, their conflicts, and their wars. […] As I continued to work I needed a context for the marks, the characters. By combining many types of architectural plans and drawings I tried to create a metaphoric, tectonic view of structural history.
Julie Mehretu
Foundations of Art, Design, + Digital Culture 