Of Other Planes of There

Narrator: Mehretu was inspired to make this painting by the protests that emerged against former President Donald Trump’s policies. The painting also draws on photographs of U.S. detention centers for migrant children. 

Julie Mehretu: I was working with many different blurred photographs of these events throughout this time, but what stands out for me in this painting, what emerges from the blurs that are formed by the signs and the people in the crowd in D.C. at the time is the almost emergence of these two colossal figures that are about to fight. They're like emerging out of a boxing ring or something, like there's almost this ceremonial gesture to that emergence of this action. 

I was looking at some photos of these detention centers that were for children, and I couldn't work with any of the images that had children in them. And I worked with images of just the facilities; of either payphones, the cots, the kind of bunk beds that were in certain parts of the facility and others that were just more open, caged areas where children were kept.

And in these images, they become the vessels of the haunting of what kind of abuse takes place in those spaces. But when you blur those images and tie them together, the blurred photo of both of those became this very haunted landscape.