Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Fourth Seal (R 6:7)

In these four large-scale chromatic prints, Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu combines photogravure with traditional intaglio printing techniques. The underlying images are press photographs documenting recent anti-immigration protests in the United States, which the artist has reworked to the point of unrecognizability, retaining only their “DNA.” 

These images merge into complex compositions of nervous gestures and erasures that Mehretu executed on copper plates using various etching techniques. Since the mid-2010s, Mehretu has collaborated with leading print studios to push the technical boundaries of printmaking, for instance by increasing the number of press runs to achieve unprecedented layering of forms and effects. The subtitles of the four works refer to the broken seals in the biblical Book of Revelation, subtly echoing our current era of upheaval marked by a global pandemic, police violence, and the resurgence of authoritarian fascist regimes. This assemblage of gestures and forms—whose relationships appear indeterminate and uncertain—metabolizes and questions the world’s violence, while offering a counterpoint: a third space, suspended, an “in-between” marked by the possibility of another way forward.