isaac julien

Isaac Julien (b. 1960, London, UK) is one of the most important and influential British visual artists in the fields of installation and film. His work combines several disciplines, including cinema, photography, dance, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, which are captured in his audio-visual installations, documentaries and photographic pieces. The plurality of his work is not only present in the process of making, but also in the way in which it is exhibited, which includes several screens, with Julien being a pioneer in multiple-screen film installations.

The artist's works often emerge from in-depth investigations of historical personalities, including Langston Hughes, Frantz Fanon and Lina Bo Bardi, in a process that often aims to review history's official versions. Although films are the main form of his artistic production, photography also plays a fundamental role in Julien’s oeuvre. In his photographs, he reinvents and redefines the aesthetics of his audio-visual production using techniques such as collage and digital photomontage.

His film Young Soul Rebels (1991) was awarded the Semaine de la Critique prize in Cannes Film Festival. Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996), which the artist co-directed with Mark Nash, received the Pratt and Whitney Canada Grand Prize. Julien was also awarded the McDermott Prize from MIT and The Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Prize (2014) during the San Francisco Film Festival. In 2015, Isaac Julien obtained the Kaino Prize for artistic excellence.

Julien lives and works in London, UK. He has had various solo exhibitions at institutions such as: Once Again…(Statues Never Die), at Barnes Foundation (2022), in Philadelphia, USA; Lessons of the Hour, at Metro Pictures and Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) (2019), both in New York, USA; Western Union: Small Boats, at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (2018), in Aarhus, Denmark; To the End of the World, at Galerie Forsblom (2018), in Stocholm, Sweden; and Ten Thousand Waves, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC-Niterói) (2016), in Niterói, Brazil. Julien's work has been included in 15^th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2023); at 57^th Venice Bienalle, Italy (2017); at Paris Triennial, France (2012); at 7^th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2008), and participated in group shows such as Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity, at Walker Museum, in Liverpool and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2017), in Birmingham, UK; The Shadow Never Lies, at Minsheng Museum (2016), in Shanghai, China. His work appears in collections around the globe, such as: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA.