As her retrospective opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Ethiopian-born, New York-based artist Julie Mehretu talks in depth about her life and work. She discusses the rich language she uses in her paintings, drawing on geopolitical subject matter but pushing towards abstraction. She talks about the influence of contemporary artists like David Hammons, Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon, her collaboration with the British artist Tacita Dean, how Rembrandt made his mark on her as a child and the way she uses news photography as the basis for her most recent works. She talks about her literary influences, from Toni Morrison to Chris Abani, on the music she listens to in her studio, from Sun Ra to Joan Armatrading, and her fruitful collaborations with the jazz pianist Jason Moran and the theatre and opera director Peter Sellars. Among much else, she also talks about the cultural experience that changed the way she sees the world, the one work of art she would choose to live with, and answers our ultimate question: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Cork Street Galleries.

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