NOTES
Layers of mark making fuse together in Julie Mehretu’s six-panel, monumental print, Epigraph, Damascus. From afar, gestural sweeps unroll energetically across the composition. From up close, the precision of the built environment emerges in the crisp outlines of architectural renderings. This push and pull of clarity and density appears frequently in the artist’s work.
Photographs of the city of Damascus and the destruction suffered during the Syrian Civil War (2011–24) were a point of departure for this print. Using a variety of etching techniques, Mehretu built overlapping webs that simultaneously distance and engulf the viewer. Their vibrating lines and shapes create a visual map, evoking the ways conflict ripples outward on multiple levels. This print moves beyond the specifics of time and location to suggest the power of images to make the familiar strange and the faraway near.
