Contemporary visual artist Julie Meretu’s paintings hang in some of the world’s most prestigious art institutions. Mehretu is known for his large-scale, abstract, multi-layered landscape works that explore themes of history and globalism, which have earned him international acclaim.
But the Ethiopian-born, US-based artist is quick to credit those who paved the way for his success. “We’re standing here, as always, on the shoulders of giants, and I hope we can create more of that space for many others who deserve to be a part of it,” she told CNN’s Larry Madowo during a visit to Nairobi.
Creating space for others is exactly what Meretu does. Currently, she and her team at the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC), a pan-African artist network, are completing a series of workshops held across Africa. “We’re doing these workshops in five different cities across the continent, engaging with media art, media and film, and really trying to explore that space within the deeply mediated world we live in right now,” she explained.
The goal is to be able to “create a kind of cross-disciplinary, cross-generational conversation between nations, between artist spaces, so that we can not only amplify our voices, but also invent new forms that are just as rigorous and challenging,” she added.
The idea for the workshop stemmed from a project in 2018 when BMW chose Meretu to build its 20th art car. Since 1975, this initiative has given renowned international artists complete creative freedom to transform BMW cars into “rotating sculptures”.
By participating, Mehretu joins the ranks of artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Like all of his projects, Meretu wanted this one to stand out and proposed an idea that connected him to his home continent. “One of the things I pitched to BMW was, what if we could go from Cairo to Cape Town through this old idea of a Pan-African highway, so we could use the car as a common link between these places, work with filmmakers from each country, use the road and the car as the protagonists, and really let Africans tell their stories,” she said.
With this vision and financial support from BMW, Mehretu and AFMAC co-founder and filmmaker Meret Mandefro partnered with local cultural institutions across Africa to deliver workshops aimed at “connecting and strengthening arts communities within Africa.” The first destination was Lagos, Nigeria in April 2025. The team then headed to Tangier, Morocco. Nairobi, Kenya. It will then travel to Dakar, Senegal, before arriving in Cape Town, South Africa next month.
Each workshop will produce a new film, and at the end of the series, the films will be compiled to showcase contemporary African filmmaking. The compilation will debut alongside the BMW Art Car exhibition at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town next year.
“The African continent is a place that always brings me back,” Mehretu said. “This is where I was born. I have lived in Zimbabwe and Senegal and have traveled extensively across the continent. And there are immense possibilities of what could happen, but there are pan-African possibilities, especially in the creative field.”
While completing the workshop, Mehretu is preparing to present another big project, something he has never done before. In 2024, the Obama Foundation announced that Mehretu had been selected to create a unique artwork for the Presidential Library in Chicago. Mehretu said the project was “exciting” but the challenges were also “unique”.
“I had never worked with glass before, and the proposal was to create an artwork in this huge glass window that goes up the escalator to the 34th floor of the building,” she said. But through hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance, Mehretu and her team succeeded. When former President Barack Obama asks her to do something, she jokes, “I say yes and say, ‘Okay, how soon?'” It is scheduled to open to the public next spring.
Mehretu’s work is held in prominent museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the British Museum in London. But when asked about her legacy, Mehretu returns her focus to working with others.
She said she would like to be able to “join a larger group of makers, painters, creative artists, sculptors, video artists, media artists, filmmakers (and) musicians.” Mehretu added: “Cultural reverberations take another form. There is a collective of which we are all a part, and I hope that creates space for even more of that possibility. And I look forward to what the future holds.”
