Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me (Paperback)

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Thus, the exhibition is a compelling mix of stills and projected works, the latter of which move from the single screen of Looking for Langston to Julien’s now commonplace use of multi-screen projection.

In an exploration of the life and times of abolitionist Frederick Douglas (1818-1895), Julian uses some of his most potent words here. The sound of rotor blades and the pilot’s dryly pragmatic commentary are juxtaposed with figures from Chinese myth and history. View image in fullscreen The abandoned first wife of the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as imagined in Julien’s Lessons of the Hour, 2019. One quote uttered in the film strikes me and I sit with it for a while: ‘Nothing is more galvanising than a sense of a shared past. Locke (and Julien) dream of restitution, and of something beyond, conveyed by the work’s lasting image of Locke in crisp tuxedo amid falling snow.His camera dwells on shimmering makeup, coiffed hair, buttons, stitches and velvet, on honed bodies and chiselled faces, bentwood furniture and the breeze lifting a gauzy blind. The intention of the artist, curators, and designer seems to be that the viewer become completely immersed within Julien’s filmic expression. The accompanying audio, voiced by Stuart Hall, poses questions about the relative brevity of ‘the Negro being in vogue’ and associated references to the (in)visibility of homosexuality. The other standout room here houses two films: ‘Ten Thousand Waves’ from 2010 and ‘Western Union: Small Boats’ from 2007. His pioneering work in film explores a variety of issues including black identity, diaspora, migration and capital.

He disfigures the museum further in his newest work, and spectacular entrance to the show, Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), in which Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke interrogates Albert C. What links both films within the exhibition is the notion of representing architecture on screen and in this it is, I think, singularly unique. Other works on display are “Territories” (1984), which focuses on the Black British experience in the early 1980s, and “This is Not An AIDS Advertisement” (1987), an essential work of LGBTQIA+ history that remains as powerful today. André Holland (of Moonlight fame) plays the black philosopher and theorist Alain Locke, who was unmistakably gay, and pursued the young Langston Hughes.This exploration of the ownership of African works of art is further examined by the lyrical element of much of Julien’s works.

Julien was also a member of the Gay Black Group before the Aids crisis began to wreak disproportionate havoc among Black gay men. Whether it’s about technological development, or where a capital is located, bodies tend to follow,” Julien says, reminding me of Ian Sanjay Patel’s We’re Here Because You Were There, a study of how the legacies of empire continue to affect migration. The Tate solo show charts the development of his pioneering work in film and video over four decades from the 1980s through to the present day. Where elsewhere his poetic allusions never lose sight of their subject, here they feel oblique and unfocused.

Once Again…(Statues Never Die) is projected on three large screens and wonderfully reflected in mirrors splayed across the gallery. Neon lights will be delivered in 2-4 weeks, as they are made in small batches and shipped separately from other items.

There’s something divine in that moment when very little has to be uttered, yet so much vim and determination are produced when I’m with other Black people, striving for better, knowing our shared histories.Entering Isaac Julien’s forty-year career survey What Freedom Is To Me you run an edifying gauntlet, a hallway offering a peremptory review of the artist’s vintage and seminal films: Territories (1984), This is Not An AIDS Advertisement (1987), Who Killed Colin Roach?