“Making Connections with Julie Mehretu” - Deen Sharp

Terreform Co-director and AKPIA@MIT Post-Doc Fellow Deen Sharp was in discussion with artist Julie Mehretu as part of a panel organized by the Aga Khan Program at MIT.

Panelists included:
Julie Mehretu, New York based artist
Miriam Cooke, Professor Emerita, Duke University
Asma Naeem, Curator, The Baltimore Museum of Art
Nasser Rabbat, Director, AKPIA@MIT
Deen Sharp, AKPIA@MIT Post-Doctoral Fellow

Published on Jun 12, 2019 by MIT Architecture

excerpt from Artscope Magazine:

….Sharp made the opening remarks and introduced the panel. Each panelist was tasked with responding to Mehretu’s two artworks inspired by the Arab Spring: “Mogamma,” a huge four-piece work produced during the early days of the Tahrir uprising that forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down and “Epigraph, Damascus,” a six-panel reaction to the Syrian Revolution in its fourth year of mortal struggle against the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Assad. Sharp’s talk “Marking Moments: The Actually Existing Third Space of Julie Mehretu” traced the progression of Mehretu’s work in “Mogamma,” “Cairo” and “Damascus, Epigraph.” He outlined how her marks documenting the uprisings shifted to marks making meaning out of the social chaos. “Mehretu … illuminates how we can see outwards by looking within; how tensions, contradictions and difference can exist together; how absences can create the most powerful presence; how the smallest mark can be the deepest,” said Sharp.

Early on in the process of putting together Beyond the Square, Deen had approached Julie Mehretu about including her work on Egypt–specifically, Mogamma (A Painting in Four Parts) (2012) and Cairo (2013). Asking her felt like a long shot so we were both over the moon when she agreed to be involved. (Co-editor Claire Panetta in Jadaliyya).

Beyond The Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprising (Urban Research 05) Edited by Deen Sharp and Claire Panetta. With contributions from Khaled Adham; Susana Galán; Azam Khatam; C. Lanthier; Ed McAllister; Julie Mehretu; G. Ollamh; Duygu Parmaksizoglu; Aseel Sawalha; Helga Tawil-Souri. Cover art courtesy of Julie Mehretu, Marian Goodman Gallery. Cover design by Isaac Gertman / The Independent Group.