I'm not dead yet. But I don't have much more to say than what I'm working on; so enjoy. Aldous Huxley tells us that art is only for beginners, for those “who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.” If this is the epiphany of Huxley’s new found perception, then perhaps Julie Mehretu is not an artist; rather, she is a creator, an image producer, a traitor, a world assembler, a manifold becoming: a woman, man, demon, landscape, flight; a writer. Begin with a map. The ink landscapes and diagrams in Mehretu’s works have been described as the underlying structure of her work; however, a beginning does not imply this notion of hierarchy. Rather, the image becomes with map, is map becoming… becoming what? Like Perec, sitting in a café, looking, reckoning, connecting, “Try to describe,” “Try to classify,” “Decipher ...
Life after the Academy