About
The African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) is a continent-spanning cohort of artists and makers imagining new conditions of creation. Developed by artist Julie Mehretu, in the context of her BMW Art Car #20 project, and writer and producer Mehret Mandefro, AFMAC’s goal is to create sustainable infrastructures and strengthen the artistic community in Africa.
In AFMAC's first year, artists from various African countries and the global diaspora will come together to engage with questions of cultural, political, and historical identity. During five workshops taking place in Lagos, Dakar, Tangier, Nairobi, and Cape Town, participants will consider the forms of experimentation that a translocal collective enables, how cultural and political heritage can be negotiated, and the role different media play in the attribution of identity. Using archival material of African film and media works, participants are given the opportunity to develop their own creative approaches and create new forms of media art.
Engaging with peers in collectives has always shaped Mehretu's work. In 2004, she founded the artist residency Denniston Hill in North New York with artist Paul Pfeiffer and architectural historian Lawrence Chua. Meant as a place for exchange, reflection, and retreat, artists of various disciplines and backgrounds further develop their practice there. Workshop methods conceived at Denniston Hill form the foundation for AFMAC’s five workshops. Each workshop will result in a new film production and once completed, the five films will form an anthology of contemporary African filmmaking.
In 2026, the anthology will debut in a major exhibition dedicated to AFMAC along with Mehretu's design of the 20th BMW Art Car at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town, curated by its Executive Director Koyo Kouoh—the designated curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale. Along with the inaugural year of workshops, a central point of approach of AFMAC is the provision of an online film archive that African artists can continuously work with in the future.
About Julie Mehretu
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970, Julie Mehretu is a world renowned painter who lives and works in New York City. Mehretu’s practice in painting, drawing and printmaking engage us in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space by exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern day phenomenology of the social.
Mehretu received a Master's of Fine Art with honors from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. She is a recipient of many awards, including the The MacArthur Award (2005), the Berlin Prize: Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship at The American Academy in Berlin, Germany (2007) and in 2015 she was awarded the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award. Named TIME’s 100 most influential people of 2020, Mehretu also designed BMW’s 20th Art Car in 2024. In 2025, Mehretu was awarded the rank of Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
A mid-career survey of Mehretu's work recently toured at LACMA (Los Angeles), High Museum (Atlanta) The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and The Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019 - 2023. Her largest European solo exhibition to date entitled, Ensemble, was recently shown at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in Australia at the MCA in Sydney entitled, Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory, will be on view until the end of April 2024.
Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The National Academy of Design and the National Academy of Sciences in Ethiopia. She sits on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a trustee and alumna of the American Academy in Berlin, a Global Council Member at Zeitz MOCAA, and is co-founder and board member of Denniston Hill. She is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, White Cube and carlier | gebauer.
About Mehret Mandefro
Emmy-nominated producer, writer, and entrepreneur Mehret Mandefro creates powerful stories that inspire global audiences while building the infrastructure to empower independent storytellers. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she co-founded Truth Aid Media, Truth Aid Impact, A51 Pictures in Ethiopia, and the Realness Institute in South Africa—a nonprofit that trains writers, producers, and directors in film and television across Africa and her diaspora. Her work earned her recognition on Variety's list of the most impactful women in global entertainment.
Her body of work explores hidden truths and spans films and television, documentary and fiction, art and science. Her filmography includes The Cost of Inheritance (PBS), How It Feels to Be Free (Emmy-nominated, American Masters), Sweetness in the Belly (TIFF World Premiere, Amazon Prime), Difret (Sundance/Berlinale Audience Award, Netflix), Little White Lie (PBS, Netflix), and Ethiopia's first teen drama series Yegna (Kana TV).
Mehret was formerly the Executive Producer of Kana TV—the largest private free-to-air satellite television station in Ethiopia. She serves as a trusted advisor to mission-driven organizations and specializes in alternative financing models and ethical joint ventures at the intersection of culture and commerce. As a mentor to artists and creative entrepreneurs, she leads workshops, residencies, and speaks about what it takes to sustain your career as an artist in a global media industry that is volatile and extractive without burning out.
Mehret holds a BA in Anthropology from Harvard University, an MD from Harvard Medical School, an MSc in Global Public Health as a Fulbright Scholar from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a PhD in Visual and Cultural Anthropology from Temple University. She served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration and still publishes research about the social science of stories on her substack The Fragile Real. Mehret is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and lives with her husband and three children in Alexandria, VA and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To learn more about her work, visit www.drmehret.com.
BMW Group Culture
Why Culture? Why not! Culture is knowledge, a sanctuary of beauty and depth, of meaning and peace. An inspiring escape. Tranquil at best, even unsettling sometimes. As corporate citizen, the BMW Group takes social responsibility seriously, as part of which it has been involved in hundreds of cultural initiatives worldwide for over half a century, both in the arts, music & sound, architecture as well as in design. As a long-term partner, creative freedom is key – and as essential for groundbreaking works as it is for major innovations within a business enterprise like ours.
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