Julien’s ambitious film-installations and videos, which blend archive images with reenactments to offer constellationlike portraits of historic Black figures, have become cult references among artists seeking to engage with Black histories and the legacies of cultural domination, migration and the diasporic experience. A new commission from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia saw him juxtapose founder Albert C. Barnes’s interest in African art with the writing of Harlem Renaissance figurehead Alain Locke in a largescale video installation. The subject harks back to Looking for Langston, Julien’s 1989 homage to Langston Hughes, which this year was given a permanent pavilion at the Inhotim sculpture park in Brazil, as well as being screened in Julien’s Kaiserring art-award show at the Mönchehaus Museum in Germany. The recently knighted Julien also contributed to the catalogue for Sondra Perry’s Lineage for a Phantom Zone, and had a place of choice at the March Meeting in Sharjah as well as in Life Between Islands, a critically acclaimed survey of British art from the Caribbean diaspora held at London’s Tate Britain, where he’ll follow up with a solo next year.
Image: Portrait of Isaac Julien
Photography: © Thierry Bal
