Remixing Space and Time

Renowned Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu flirts with the notion of the space-time continuum in creating the BMW 20th Art Car.

- JAMIE NONIS

“I didn’t want to just decorate a car,” says Julie Mehretu. It took BMW several attempts to convince the EthiopianAmerican contemporary artist to agree to join the prodigious ranks of Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, amongst others, and add her own rendition to BMW’s acclaimed Art Car Collection.

In 2018, the multi-award-winning MacArthur Fellow was selected by a jury of high-ranking representatives of the international art world as the artist to create the 20th BMW Art Car, unveiled in a world premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in May.

Space, movement, and energy have always been central motifs in Mehretu’s work. With the BMW M Hybrid V8 as a canvas, the New York City-based artist has transformed a race car into a performative work of art that would go on to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in mid-June. “The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing limits of what can be possible,” says Mehretu, who broke the auction record for an African artist at Sotheby’s Hong Kong with her piece “Untitled (2001)”, which sold for US$9.32 million ($12.58 million), making her one of only two women to have made the list of the top 10 most expensive contemporary artworks sold in 2023.

AN ABSTRACT REMIX