‘It’s a mess’: Artist Julie Mehretu on art, sex and capitalism

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Julie Mehretu. The Ethiopian-American artist, 53, is renowned for her large-scale works. In 2023, one of her paintings sold at auction in New York for $US10.7 million, setting a record for a work by an African-born artist.

Julie Mehretu: “Fundamentally, art isn’t a place where you go to make money. You’re doing it because it’s a calling.”Credit: © Josefina Santos/Redux/Headpre

MONEY

What was money like, growing up?
Because of the war and coup in Ethiopia, my parents left their house in Addis Ababa in 1977, just four or five months after they’d finished building it. They left everything behind to start again in East Lansing, Michigan. They hustled, but we – me and my younger brother and sister – didn’t necessarily know or feel that.

Why choose a career in the arts later on? For the financial security?
[Laughs] Fundamentally, art isn’t a place where you go to make money. You’re doing it because it’s a calling. I was always working jobs since I was very young: mowing lawns, newspaper routes, cleaning doughnut shops, working in restaurants for almost 20 years. I had to make the resources that I needed to make art and do the things I wanted to do.

How much of artistic success is raw talent and how much is luck?
It’s a mess. There are so many talented individuals and so much of what we make comes from being part of a collective, part of a bigger conversation. But the economy rewards individuals in particular ways. Painting is something that can earn an income in a way other art forms can’t. Performance isn’t necessarily something you can sell. There’s a rigour and a determination that I try to maintain in the work, but I feel like so many do. How do you say one person deserves this and another doesn’t? It’s capitalism, this way of assigning value to something that doesn’t really have anything to do with what it takes to make that thing.

You’ve created works with brands like Amex and BMW. How do you decide what to say yes and no to?
Usually, I say no. With American Express, they kept coming back. In the end, they were able to support a project and came with a lot of resources to support any charity of my choice, specifically a non-profit artist and residency project that we have in the Catskills. When I did a commission for Goldman Sachs – a really enormous wall – it was my brother who pushed me. He was like, “When do you get an opportunity to make a painting of this kind?” BMW was also something I said no to many times, but my nephews really pushed me! They’re both car-lovers. Sometimes it’s family who puts pressure on you and opens up the possible.

SEX

What was it like coming out as gay to your mixed-race, East African-American family?
Oh, I came out a long time ago, in high school. At the beginning, my parents knew something was up, and it took time for the adjustment. But they’ve both been incredibly loving, supportive and welcoming to my partner and our children [Mehretu has two children with Australian artist Jessica Rankin]. And the whole family has travelled back home to Ethiopia. But at the beginning, of course, there was a learning curve.

If you had a time machine that would allow you to talk to a former version of yourself about sex, romance and sexuality, what would you tell her?
Those of us who were born in the ’70s were a bit unlucky. We came in at the end of the sexual revolution, and were starting high school just as AIDS was really becoming something. There was a fear of death, especially in the queer community. When I see young folks now, they’re so free with their gender, so free with their sexuality, so free with the way that they want to express themselves in terms of forms of relationships. So I guess I’d love to say, “Be careful, but also, be more free.”

What’s sexy about being an artist – and what’s not?
The sexiest part of making work is that sensual kind of experience. You’re playing with sensuality, the senses. The least sexy part is the expectation of a certain form of performativity.

Oh, that’s interesting. What do you mean by that?
There’s a non-genuine aspect to what’s expected at galas and events. I try to stay as close to who I am as possible, but that, to me, also takes effort.

What’s better, Julie? Good sex or good art?
Oh, I’d always say good sex!

RELIGION

Is the art that you make – or the process of making it – a spiritual experience for you in any way?
I find it hard to talk about trying to access some spiritual space through art. I feel like creativity, invention and pushing the imagination are working in a space that plays around with other forces, but think that’s the limit. At the same time, I think art is part of the sacredness of living – and that living, and this experience on this planet, is sacred. How is it that people from all over the world can look at Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride and be so completely moved?

What are your commandments for making good art?
To stay committed to the work. Follow it tenaciously and doggedly. Even if it really starts looking like shit, push through it. The other is to look, read, listen and experience as much of the world as you can.

Complete this sentence. “Other people go to church. I …”
… go to bed! Or make dinner for my children, and hang out with them.

Oh, that’s so nice.
Well, I’m a wholesome person.

Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory is on at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney until April 27, 2025.

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