Julie Mehretu (American, born 1970)

multi-color aquatint and spit-bite

81 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (206.38 x 114.94 cm)

Colby College Museum of Art, The Lunder Collection. © Julie Mehretu. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Julie Mehretu’s work consists of “visual neologisms” –art that illustrates subjects for which there is no proper language to describe. Myriads, Only by Dark is no exception. Originally conceived as individual aquatints, the artist decided that they should be seen and understood together. An explosion of black and grey markings emanates from the center of each piece, causing one’s eye to float across the images. Colored lines cross through the composition. Invoking her presence and body, Mehretu’s handprints appear in three of these aquatints, perhaps infusing the work with the artist’s own experiences. Myriads explores what Mehretu terms “self-ethnography” and its effects on the formation of one’s identity. Instead of using representational art to represent the presence of an individual, the artist gravitates toward abstraction, which in her words “afforded a whole other space of exploration, experimentation, and possibility, because it is not necessarily tethered to specific kinds of cultural meaning.”