JM
Of course it sounds naive,
but before the Bush Administration
and September 11, there was this
underlying feeling that the world
was progressing in a particular
way and different cities were developing
and morphing into this kind of unified
pseudo-capitalist dream, or something.
It was easy to go back to certain
utopian ideas about the way that
things could develop, even though
it was obvious that there were so
many obstacles, intense violence,
and injustices, that this was not
a true reality: the American economy
being so huge and doing so well,
the development of the EU, the rapid
growth of the Chinese economy, the
quickly changing economy and development
of India, the democratization of
Nigeria, air flights going back
and forth everywhere. That false
perspective and weird hope just
was crushed in the last few years.
The way the US has responded, especially
with the war in Iraq, has put the
world into a different place. I’m
not so interested right now in tying
Lagos and New York into a morphed
experience without bringing this
new and different context into the
mix. Right now it just feels like
this big knot of all these different
tendencies. It’s coming out
in my drawings a lot; they look
like these nests or gnarled webs.
Space is deflated and conflated.
I’m still trying to understand
it myself.
LC
A distinct conception of space has
emerged since that collapse you
were talking about. If you read
some of the reports about what Baghdad
looks like today, there’s this
sense that there’s one enclave
that’s very protected, almost
a miniature American shopping mall,
and that enclave is set within the
context of a very turbulent city.
JM
What’s it called, the Green
Zone? The Free Zone?
LC
The Liberty Zone. Something like
that. (laughter) Whatever. So you
have these two very distinct parts
of the same urban environment, but
in a way they’re worlds apart,
even though they’re on the
same plane. I was thinking how the
colonial city has developed in a
similar way. In cities like Delhi
or Algiers, there was the European
city and then there was the old
city. The European city is this
very clean city that’s completely
purged of disease, and everything
is very neatly planned, and then
you have the native city, which
is very picturesque but with an
incomprehensible plan, dirty streets,
very lively interactions. In the
20th-century history of architecture,
what you see happening is those
colonial cities becoming blueprints
for the metropoles. Daniel Burnham
was mapping out new urban centers
like Baguio in the Philippines before
he went on to devise the plan for
Chicago. In places like Baghdad,
or Bangkok for that matter, there
are two separate cities evolving
in the same place. The experience
of living in that city, in these
two separate cities on the same
plane, is really difficult to describe
in language but your paintings fill
that void for me. What is it like
to go from these completely crazy
streets that are barely large enough
for you to walk down, let alone
for a car, with hundreds of people
navigating these tiny human spaces,
into a mega-shopping mall, these
huge arcades? I’m wondering
where utopia fits into that? Is
that the utopia that America is
trying to create?
JM
I think they want more shoppers.
(laughter) I don’t know. What
I am interested in are these plural
events that seem worlds apart happening
and being experienced at the same
time, and the relationship between
those places, or existing in between
that. It’s hard because I don’t
like to only talk about the US exporting
those types of ideas, but also how
those ambitions are imported to
places. Iraq as a situation is such
a quagmire. I was talking to a friend
who works at the State Department
who was saying that this is basically
going to be the largest embassy
for the US, the largest foreign
embassy that they plan on building.
That to me is the same situation
you’re talking about, the extreme
capitalist colonial palace in the
middle of the worst dysfunctional
condition. So you have to think
that there’s a colonial mission,
or something similar to one. That
is something we were talking about
in the studio also.
LC
Right. You’ve been looking
at some of the Viennese architect
Otto Wagner’s drawings from
the turn of the 19th to 20th century.
It’s a period that is of interest
to me right now in my studies, that
moment when modernity was produced.
One of the other fellows in my program
said that it was only by looking
at that period that you could really
make sense of what is happening
in the world today.
t
the heart of Julie Mehretu’s
paintings is a question about the
ways in which we construct and live
in the world. Perhaps that is what
makes the work so radical: its willingness
to unravel the conventionally given
answers about the violent environment
we inhabit today. Mehretu’s paintings
are composed of layers, fragments
and movements. One can often detect
the detritus of characters, architectural
drawings, graffiti, comic books, air-brushing,
and ink wash circulating in the space
of her paintings. These fragments
are not the broken parts of total
languages, they are part of a process
of describing the world: they come
together as they fall apart. Typically,
Mehretu begins these paintings by
imposing a plan that will dictate
the composition, then responds to
these outlines with architectural
drawings. Gestural marks inhabit those
spaces: they act on and are acted
upon by the built space of the painting.
Some of Mehretu’s recent paintings
quote from stadium plans and the architecture
of mass sport. We share this interest
in the conjoined genealogies of modernity
and the sports stadium and the ways
in which contemporary experience is
mediated by a scopic regime that was
historically shaped in such arenas.
To look at what is happening in the
paintings is to be aware of the feeling
of being inside and outside of a thing.
