Julie Mehretu has been an internationally acclaimed artist for the past two decades. Her work is featured in museums around the world, and among her many awards and honors she is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” (2005) and a U.S. State Department National Medal of Arts (2015).

This one-hour film on Julie documents her mid-career retrospective, co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Nov. 2019-Sept. 2020) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (Mar.-Aug. 2021).

The film traces the artist’s preparations for the retrospective, leading up to the installation and realization of the survey at LACMA, which includes 36 paintings and 41 works on paper, representing over two decades of art, from her graduate work at RISD (1996-7) to her current large multi-layered canvases. Mehretu offers extensive commentary on her work, her process, and the chronology of her career. Also interviewed are a number of art world friends and associates.