From May 10th to October 12th, 2025, K21 at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf presents Julie Mehretu: KAIROS / Hauntological Variations, the artist’s first major mid-career retrospective in Germany. Organized in collaboration with the Pinault Collection, the exhibition showcases nearly 100 works spanning three decades, including paintings, drawings, monotypes, and time-based media. Known for her dynamic, multilayered abstractions, Mehretu’s work is shaped by her experience of displacement, migration, and political unrest. The show traces her evolution from the architectural line drawings of the 1990s to recent large-scale paintings based on manipulated press photography.
Visitors will encounter early works like Rise of the New Suprematists (2001), where fragmented cityscapes float beneath swarms of dots and marks—what Mehretu has called characters—that reference the volatility of historical and political forces. In Conjured Parts (tongues) (2015), blurred media images related to civil unrest and climate disasters form the background for abstract gestures suggesting resistance and resilience. More recent works, such as Desire was our breastplate (2022–23), incorporate vibrant color fields, calligraphic strokes, and visual references to global events, offering what Mehretu calls “visual neologisms.”
A significant highlight is the public debut of her extensive image archive, which has shaped her compositions since the mid-1990s. The exhibition includes her rarely shown Archive Pages (1997), a series of annotated photocopies that reveal the foundations of her pictorial language. Alongside these are monotypes and early works on paper that reflect her ongoing experimentation with printmaking and drawing. Time-based works—such as a music album and video pieces inspired by Mehretu’s art—extend her visual language into new formats. Born in Addis Ababa and based in New York, Mehretu continues to transform the legacy of abstraction into a medium for witnessing and reimagining global history. Her Düsseldorf show affirms her status as one of the most vital voices in contemporary painting today.
Dive into our conversation with Julie Mehretu on abstraction, memory, and the emotional force of painting.