During her residency in Berlin, Mehretu was commissioned to create seven paintings by the Deutsche Guggenheim; titled "Grey Area" (2008–2009), the series explores the urban landscape of Berlin as a historical site of generation and destruction. The painting "Vanescere" (2007), a black-and-white composition that depicts what appears to be a maelstrom of ink and acrylic marks, some of which are sanded away on the surface of the linen support, propelled a layering process of subtraction in the "Grey Area" series. Parts of "Fragment" (2008–09) and "Middle Grey" (2007–09) feature this erasing technique. Another in the series that was painted in Berlin, "Berliner Plätze" (2008–09), holds a phantom presence of overlapped outlines of nineteenth-century German buildings that float as a translucent mass in the frame. The art historian Sue Scott has this to say of the "Grey Area" series: "In these somber, simplified tonal paintings, many of which were based on the facades of beautiful nineteenth-century buildings destroyed in World War II, one gets the sense of buildings in the process of disappearing, much like the history of the city she was depicting." As Mehretu explains in Ocula Magazine, 'The whole idea of 20th-century progress and ideas of futurity and modernity have been shattered, in a way. All of this is what is informing how I am trying to think about space.'