Julie Mehretu

“I don't ever work in a way where something is an illustration of an event, but when something is occurring at the same time I see it as very informed by that.”

“People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.”

“You're not just this person who's from your own specific experiences, but the collective experience of what makes you who you are because of time.”

“When you're not a mom, you can get up in the middle of the night, paint, sleep all morning... you can't do that when you have two children!”

“Race always comes up in the conversation of Detroit.”

“That's what I'm interested in: the space in between, the moment of imagining what is possible and yet not knowing what that is.”

“I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.”

“I always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it.”