Conjured Parts (Eye), Ferguson

Narrator: Mehretu made this painting in response to press images of uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. These protests began shortly after police officer Darren Wilson murdered a young, unarmed Black man named Michael Brown. 

Julie Mehretu: There was something very haunting about the images from Ferguson, the images of the militarized police force engaged with this community of Black folks that were trying to insist on their right to exist. So I was looking at these photographs, but a lot of the photographs I would blur, and then I would paint the blurred image into the painting and then would respond to that in some way. 

For this painting, the photograph was a black and white blurred photograph. It was of this scene of protestors against police with riot gear. What happens when you blur a photo, the specters inside of the photo kind of become primal, and you only have the dynamic of the light and the shadows and what is created within that. And then there's all these other levels of gray area where there's almost this haunting-ness, the haunting trace of the photo is there.