BMW welcomes julie mehretu as the 20th art car artist at guggenheim new york

BMW art car 20th artist is Julie Mehretu

BMW has announced that artist Julie Mehretu will create the 20th BMW Art Car. The news was unveiled at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City on June 28th, 2023 frequented by both the artist and BMW M Hybrid V8 racetrack car. Julie Mehretu will have full creative freedom to design the car, joining BMW’s growing collection of ‘rolling sculptures’ since 1975 which includes Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, Esther Mahlangu, Cao Fei, and John Baldessari, among others.

Julie Mehretu will treat the BMW M Hybrid V8 Art Car as her automotive art canvas and after the culmination of the design, the Mehretu-painted V8 will participate in the 24-Hour race of Le Mans in June 2024, a continuing a tradition that spans almost 50 years. Julie Mehretu, co-founder of the Realness Institute together with Mehret Mandefro which aims to strengthen the media ecosystem across Africa, will host a series of gatherings in eight African cities over the course of nine months to open up space for artists to meet, exchange, and collaborate in trans-local ways.

These workshops have the sole intention of creating a forum for the artists to consider new pathways to implementing just civic futures in their respective local communities and harness the power of the trans-local collective. The results of these workshops will be presented alongside the 20th BMW Art Car at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in 2025.

BMW welcomes Julie Mehretu as the 20th art car artist at guggenheim new york | image © designboom

BMW M Hybrid V8 as the art car canvas

This collaboration between BMW and Julie Mehretu brings together the worlds of motorsport, design, arts, technology, and mobility, following in the footsteps of renowned artists who have previously created BMW racing cars. These artists include Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Ólafur Elíasson, Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, Cao Fei, and John Baldessari.

The canvas for the 20th BMW Art Car is the BMW M Hybrid V8, BMW M GmbH’s new competition car in endurance racing featuring a hybrid drive system with around 640 horsepower, whose 4.0-liter V8 engine is supported by an electric motor. Constructing her own BMW art car realm, Julie Mehretu may bring over her penchant for depicting social behavior and the psychogeography of space, from geological time to a modern-day phenomenology of the social.

‘I’ve loved cars for most of my life, as toys, as objects, as possibilities. It is from that space that I’m really excited to be working on the next BMW Art Car more than anything,’ says Julie Mehretu. ‘The thrill of the speed, the 24-Hour race of Le Mans and what is possible to invent in hybrid and fully electric vehicles as future modes of play and pushing ahead into new terrains of transportation and motorsports.’

announcement of the 20th BMW Art Car artist at the Guggenheim new york | image courtesy of BMW