Choice #1: Julie MehRetu
From art 21:
“Trying to figure out who I am and my work is trying to understand systems,” says Julie Mehretu, shown working with her assistants in Berlin on seven large canvases for a show at Deutsche Guggenheim. “The thing that keeps me going is the painting,” she says, “and in getting lost in doing that a language is invented.”
Mehretu’s abstract compositions reference modernist architecture, Google Maps, Coliseum-like buildings, and defaced structures. Mehretu is also shown working on the biggest project of her young career: a 21 by 85 foot long mural commissioned by a major financial institution in Lower Manhattan, to be completed during the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Characterizing the task before her as “absurd,” she wonders “can you actually make a picture…of the history of capitalist development?”
Choice #2: JOAN JONAS-- DRAWINGS
From Art 21:
"Shown drawing in her Manhattan studio and performing on stage at the Umeå Jazz Festival in Sweden, Joan Jonas describes her approach to drawing and its role within her overall practice. “Drawing is like practicing the piano, because the first ones that I do often don’t come out so I have to practice,” says Jonas who handicaps herself by attaching her ink brushes and oil sticks to long rods or branches.
“It’s almost accidental if they turn out.” While showing archived drawings of her dogs and an owl, Jonas discusses her interest in capturing an animal’s character through portraiture."
https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/joan-jonas-drawings-short/