Julie Mehretu: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Large-scale prints Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 2020 by Julie Mehretu on display in our Showroom. After introducing the suite of prints at our Berlin Gallery, we are now pleased to present the project in Copenhagen.

The title of the series stems from Joan Didion’s 1967 essay Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which in turn references William B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming (1919). Both authors describe a moment of reigning chaos, a moment in time when everything seems to culminate and fall apart; right before everything is halted, awaiting what’s to come. For Mehretu, this reflects the time during which she was working on the prints (2019/2020): A moment of severe uncertainty scarred by the rise of fascist authoritarianism, civil unrest, an upcoming US election with an uncertain result, and a global pandemic. Mehretu understands the prints as four states of the same event similar to the opening of the first four seals in The Book of Revelations and the moments of the arrival of the four horsemen in the single titles.

Kilde: BORCH Editions Showroom.