Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me (Paperback)

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Barnes (creator of the Barnes Foundation), the struggle for parity between African Art and Western Art, and the need to decolonize collections and repatriate stolen works.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel the framing of the piece in histories of slavery, albeit conversations worthy of having, was somewhat triggering, which made this film perhaps the heaviest work in the show for me personally. And underfoot are plush carpets, in shades of blue and red, providing the feel of a particularly luxe multiplex. 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.This interconnectedness is palpable throughout the exhibition, from the collaborators with whom Julien (a 2021 Wallpaper* Design Awards judge) has worked throughout his career to the themes that recur via his own timeline; histories and narratives are questioned in a way that informs but never feels didactic. It is difficult to decide whether to focus on one screen or to try and follow them all but ultimately even when focussing on one, your peripheral vision takes in elements the others. They narrate from Bo Bardi’s writing, “Linear time is a Western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvelous entanglement, where at any moment points can be chosen and solutions invented without beginning or end. In doing this, the artist holds up a (metaphorical) Soanian convex mirror to its audience and wonders if, confronted with both the official narrative of the museum and its contents alongside a more affective interpretation, our views on the repatriation of historic artefacts would be quite as certain as we might think they are.

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”. The multi-screen is of course a well-established and effective means through which one can, quite literally, avail oneself of multiple readings of the same or similar – as well as deliberately contrasting – images. A portrait of the life and times of the self-liberated freedom fighter Frederick Douglass, the work almost represents Julien’s forty-year commitment to cultural activism, the politics and poetics of image, and the moral and social influence of picture-making. 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.

Where elsewhere his poetic allusions never lose sight of their subject, here they feel oblique and unfocused.

Although, this later work nevertheless reflects a visual richness that continues to be the hallmark of Julien’s practice.In the mid-1980s, Julien was mentored by the “very generous” Derek Jarman, whose films, such as Edward II and Caravaggio, inspired the visual language Julien would develop in Looking for Langston. which process visitor data, such as IP address, operating system, browser type, and version, time of access and referrer URL (previously visited page). The “paths” are corridors with color-coded carpets and with individual sounds and scents to evoke a sense that teases and directs us through. Take 2007’s Western Union: Small Boats and 2010’s Ten Thousand Waves, both works about migration, which are paired for this show.