A Universal History of Everything and Nothing by Julie Mehretu

“The paintings of Julie Mehretu captured the spirit of our fragile, new century. Monumentally scaled and visually explosive, they resonated with a perception of the world irrevocably impacted by an accelerated consciousness of the simultaneity of events in time and place and the intersecting flows of economies, geopolitics, and people that were their engine.”
— Suzanne Cotter

Published on the occasion of Julie Mehteru’s exhibition A Universal History of Everything and Nothing at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto and at Centro Botín in Santander, this book reflects the formal, pictorial, critical and poetic overlays that are fundamental to the artist’s work. It includes newly commissioned essays by renowned authors Amin Maalouf and Marina Warner and a curatorial overview by Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. New photography documenting Mehretu’s process in the studio, together with details and large scale reproductions of paintings and drawings are accompanied by images selected by the artist as part of a richly layered and urgent visual universe.