Stadia II (2004) by Julie Mehretu, ink and acrylic on canvas.

From The Walker Art Center’s description of the artist:

Julie Mehretu’s biography reads a bit like an atlas. She was born in Ethiopia, raised in Michigan, educated in Senegal and Rhode Island, and now lives in New York. It is no surprise, then, that her work incorporates the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms as it alternates between historical narratives and fictional landscapes.

[…]

Mehretu combines a personal language of signs and symbols with architectural imagery to create her elaborate semi-abstractions. Simultaneously engaged with the formal concerns of color and line and the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, she is interested in “the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity.” The underlying structure of her work consists of socially charged public spaces—government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools, and airports—drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. She inscribes her own narrative into these decontextualized, highly controlled spaces through the layering of personal markings. Mehretu achieves an effect of compositional maelstrom, as elements advance and recede within the graphically ambiguous spaces. With paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction while constantly referencing the world around us, she creates perfect metaphors for the increasingly interconnected and complex character of the 21st century.