FACTS OF LIFE: Drawn from forgetfulness by Mathew (and Mummy) is an artist's book consisting of works from the suite of drawings FACTS OF LIFE (2022–2026), a series of spontaneously generated images made by an adult in relation to their childhood. Emptying his head, the artist begins to draw, and this is what has appeared; not truth, or innocence, but beautiful and disturbing surprises grown in the soil of truth and innocence. The extensive visual material is augmented by two newly commissioned texts. One, by fellow artist Julie Mehretu, emerges from many years of friendship and debate. The other, by writer, psychoanalyst, and art historian Rye Dag Holmboe, discusses the FACTS OF LIFE suite in relation to psychoanalytic theory and personal biography.

Mathew Hale is a visual artist who also writes and occasionally curates. He works in a wide variety of media, making paintings, sculptures, installations, collages, and drawings, as well as photographic slide-dissolve works that incorporate sound. Hale has a particular interest in the practice of “free drawing,” as theorized by Marion Milner in her book On Not Being Able to Paint; he worked as Milner’s assistant for the last eight years of her life. Hale’s recent 2026 solo exhibition Spontaneous Generation (Facts of Life) at Sperling, Munich featured 400 works from his series of free drawings FACTS OF LIFE. Hale has participated in many group shows and has presented solo exhibitions in Berlin, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Kitatkyushu, Japan, where he was the recipient of the CCA Artists’ Residency. In 2025–26, he was an Artist in Residence at I Tatti – The Harvard University for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence. He has written catalogue essays on the work of fellow artists Ceal Floyer, Rodney Graham, Julie Mehretu, and Matt Saunders, and authored the main text for the publication accompanying the group show The Youngest Day, which he curated in 2021 (published by XAB, 2022). Hale is based in Berlin and Los Angeles.

Julie Mehretu is a world renowned visual artist in contemporary painting, drawing, and printmaking. Mehretu is the recipient of many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005, the Medal of Arts Award from the US Department of State in 2015, and in 2025, she was awarded the Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. She was named in TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2020. In 2024, Mehretu created an 83 × 25 foot glass mural for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, entitled Uprising of the Sun. 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; and is co-founder and board member of Denniston Hill artist residency. Mehretu lives and works in New York City.

Rye Dag Holmboe is a psychoanalyst, art historian, writer, and curator. He works in private practice and at the Camden Psychotherapy Unit, a mental health charity in London. He holds a PhD in the History of Art from University College London, where he was an AHRC Doctoral Scholar, and was subsequently awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where he is now an Honorary Research Fellow. He has published widely on art history, literature, and psychoanalysis, and his writings have appeared in journals and magazines including The London Review of Books, Apollo, and Critical Quarterly. His biography of Howard Hodgkin is under contract with Yale University Press and a further book, Everyday Beauty, is forthcoming. He is Vice President of the Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy, and a trustee of Flat Time House and the Freud Museum, London. Holmboe lives and works in London.

Santiago da Silva is a Berlin-based designer and founder of Stoodio Santiago da Silva, working across publications, identities, communication systems, and exhibition displays for contemporary art and culture. The studio is known for an approach that enables public-facing formats to function as artistic spaces, mediating between artistic practices, audiences, and institutions.