Julie Mehretu (born 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an artist, best known for her densely-layered abstract illustrative paintings and prints. She lives and works in New York City. 'I think of my abstract mark-making as a type of sign lexicon, signifier, or language for characters that hold identity and have social agency. The characters in my maps plotted, journeyed, evolved, and built civilisations...

Julie Mehretu's large-scale, mixed media paintings create a dizzying field of layered landscapes to construct colorful and complex abstractions and lines. Drawing from historical and fictional references to architecture, urban planning, societal structures of power, and personal narrative,