A painting as a map

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites you to a workshop for adults accompanying the exhibition “Julie Mehretu. Kairos / Hauntological Variations”.

The starting point for our meeting will be the work of Julie Mehretu. This artist constructs her paintings like large-format maps of the contemporary world. On her canvases, the lines resemble architectural plans, diagrams, and movement records. However, these are “maps without a legend”—they do not lead us to a single, stable image of the world, but rather reveal its cracks, tensions, and discontinuities.

During the workshop, we will treat the map as something much more than just a tool for finding our way. Together, we will explore how the combination of art and cartography changes our perception of a specific space.

 

Part I (Inspiration and Theory):
Together, we will view selected works at the exhibition and complete simple introductory exercises. We’ll also explore examples of “critical cartography”—a field that demonstrates that every map is someone’s interpretation of reality, not an objective, neutral reflection of it.

Part II (Creative Activity):
We’ll get to work and create our own original forms of mapping. In doing so, we’ll use techniques characteristic of the artist herself. We will combine drawings, text excerpts, and archival maps of Warsaw (as well as other places in Poland and around the world) to build new, spatial artworks from them.

Mikołaj Brzozowski – MSN educator and one half of the osesi collective. He works in literary outreach and collaborates with diverse local communities. Co-editor of the publication "Poezja do wczuwania. A Collection of Poems and Exercises"—a volume of poems and a toolkit for animation work using contemporary poetry. A student of cultural studies at the University of Warsaw.