Julie Mehretu awarded Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture

The prestigious award recognizes eminent artists and creators, and those who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts and culture in France and throughout the world.

Julie Mehretu, (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) lives and works in New York City. She received a B.A. from Kalamazoo College, Michigan, studied at the University Cheik Anta Diop, Dakar Senegal, and received a Master’s of Fine Art with honors from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1997.

In exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern day phenomenology of the social, Julie Mehretu's works engage us in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space.

Mehretu’ s work is informed by a multitude of sources including politics, literature and music. Most recently her paintings have incorporated photographic images from broadcast media which depict conflict, injustice, and social unrest. These graphic images act as intellectual and compositional points of departure; ultimately occluded on the canvas, they remain as a phantom presence in the highly abstracted gestural completed works. Mehretu’s practice in painting, drawing and printmaking equally assert the role of art to provoke thought and reflection, and express the contemporary condition of the individual and society.

She has received many prestigious awards including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2005, and the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts Award in 2015 and membership to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021. Her work has been exhibited extensively in museums and biennials including the Carnegie International (2004–05), Sydney Biennial (2006), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010), dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), Sharjah Biennial (2015), Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2017), Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, UK (2019), and the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, (2019).

In November 2019 a career survey opened of Mehretu’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and traveled to The High Museum, Atlanta (2020), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021); and The Walker Museum of Art, Minneapolis (2021). Julie Mehretu: Ensemble opened in 2024 at the Palazzo Grassi-Pinault Collection, Venice, Italy and in November 2024 the first exhibition of Mehretu’s work to be shown in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region will open at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

The artist is a strong advocate and a catalyst for social justice and cultural preservation initiatives. As co-founder of Denniston Hill in 2004 with Paul Pfeiffer and Lawrence Chua, Mehretu has helped create a residency that serves as a sanctuary for artists and multidisciplinary creatives to reconnect with nature, explore creative ideas, and foster communities. Mehretu, along with Adam Pendleton, Rashid Johnson, and Ellen Gallagher, acquired the childhood home of Nina Simone, which was at risk of demolition, in 2017 to preserve and honor the legacy of the seminal singer and civil rights activist; it is now under the care of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

A committed supporter of the movement to end mass incarceration, Mehretu donated a painting to Rockefeller Philanthropies in 2021 to support the Art For Justice Fund, which was created to provide grants to artists and advocates focused on safely reducing the prison population. The work raised $6.5 million, marking it as the largest contribution from an artist to the fund after the fund’s initiator, Agnes Gund.

This year, Mehretu fully funded a much-needed Campaign Coordinator position for the Michigan office of the Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth. This initiative seeks to abolish the policy of Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) sentencing in Michigan, where 70 percent of those serving JLWOP sentences are Black.

Main Image: Portrait of Julie Mehretu, photo by Josefina Santos.