In her most recent paintings, Mehretu introduces bold gestural marks and employs a dynamic range of techniques such as airbrushing and screenprinting. The works draw on her archive of media images of major global events such as environmental catastrophes, wars, crises, protests, and abuses of power; she digitally blurs, crops, and rescales this source material, then uses it as the foundation for her paintings, overlaying the images with calligraphic sweeps and loose drawing. Of the blurred photographs, Mehretu says, “There’s a subconscious terror that you feel vibrating close to the surface.… More than I’ve ever felt in my lifetime here in the U.S. It’s seeping into everything. I feel like that is what I’m trying to metabolize in these new paintings.”