Hineni (E. 3:4) (Me voici)

To make this painting, Mehretu used Photoshop to combine images of the Rohingya Muslim community fires in Burma in 2017 and the California wildfires in 2018.

Julie Mehretu creates abstract works with a calligraphic and musical touch, which evoke the sociocultural transformations related to migration. This work summons the transfiguring power of painting around the motif of fire, as hinted by the title of the work ("Here I am" in Hebrew), which refers to the story of the burning bush in the Old Testament. Between climate calamity, ethnic cleansing and symbolic resilience, the artist establishes an incandescent and ambiguous cartography of the world today.