Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me (Paperback)

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This is a stunningly designed exhibition, curated intelligently to be an active one that asks us to partake in the narrative, not to be passive bystanders to history, to great effect. This ambitious solo exhibition (26 April–20 August 2023) reveals the scope of Julien’s pioneering work in film and installation from the early 1980s through to the present day. What links both films within the exhibition is the notion of representing architecture on screen and in this it is, I think, singularly unique. Although the legacies of slavery are still felt today, financially and socially, something about looking back to that time to a Black viewer can have a sense of ‘here we go again’.

This technique is an engaging one, as it brings the audience’s attention squarely back to the act of conscious looking.The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial catalogue, which together with other recent publications, such as that which accompanies Lessons of the Hour (2022), and Isaac Julien: Riot (2013), ensure that Julien is creating an unarguable trail of scholarship and reflection befitting a particularly important artist. That museum and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia are among the settings for Julien’s gripping study of contested heritage, African art and modernism, as well as the meeting of art and poetry, and the queer desire so fundamental to Hughes, Locke and their artist peers like Richmond Barthé, and a consistent theme in Julien’s own work. Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me” reads a little like a conversation, one that takes place between the artist and his past, between poignant historical narratives, between time, space and culture, and between us, the viewer, and the art. Julien’s critical thinking, aimed above all at an intense engagement with the culture and history of colonialism, is expressed in his early films, as well as in the highly aesthetic film images of the major, internationally acclaimed video installations of the last twenty years.

His work, which spans films and video installations, has been displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as well as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in 2022, he was knighted for his work in diversity and the arts.Frederick Douglass, at Tate Britain's exhibition "Isaac Julien: What freedom is to me" Photo Jack Hems. I start outside where I encounter works such as This is not an AIDS advertisement (1987), a film that celebrates sexual desire and queer relationships produced amid the AIDS crisis, and Who Killed Collin Roach? While Julien documents the wholesale pillage of African civilisation, he wreaks subtle revenge by elegantly raiding the iconography of European cinema.

It is difficult within the scope of a review like this to take on such an expansive subject, including, as was pointed out to me on Twitter by Adam Nathaniel Furman, the architect’s more controversial political allegiances. We'd also like to use analytics cookies so we can understand how you use our site and to make improvements.One could simply perambulate from path to path (with different carpet colors) watching the movies in this space, devoid of any sense of time. Locke appears in dialogue with Albert Barnes (played by Danny Huston), debating the status of the African art Barnes bought for his collection in the 1920s, which “is in danger of becoming a fashion or fad”. at Tate Britain, London, includes seven major filmic works, presented in six specially constructed viewing areas. In 2022, he was awarded the Goslar Kaiserring; that same year, he was appointed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (AMPAS), entrusted with the annual awarding of the Oscars.