Isaac Julien: Photographic works from 'Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass'

Isaac Julien is as acclaimed for his fluent, arresting films as for his vibrant and inventive gallery installations. One of the objectives of his work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting them to construct a powerfully visual narrative.

Julien came to prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. During the past three decades he has made work largely, though not exclusively, for galleries and museums, using multi-screen installations to express fractured narratives exploring memory and desire.

Julien’s major film installations include Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022, commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in celebration of its centennial, an immersive five-screen installation exploring the relationship between Dr Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’; Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, 2019, a meditation on the life, words, and actions of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), the visionary African American abolitionist and freed slave, and on the issues of social justice that shaped his life’s work; Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, 2019, reflecting on the iconic work and on the legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992); PLAYTIME, 2014, which explores the dramatic and nuanced subject of financial capital; Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, exploring China's ancient past and rapidly transforming present through a series of interlocking narratives.

About the Artist

Born in 1960, Isaac Julien lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, California.

He has been making films and producing film installations for over forty years, including All That Changes You. Metamorphosis (2025), Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass (2019), Stones Against Diamonds (2015), PLAYTIME (2014), Ten Thousand Waves (2010), Western Union: Small Boats (2007), Fantôme Afrique (2005), True North (2004), Baltimore (2003), Paradise Omeros (2002), Vagabondia (2000), and Long Road to Mazatlan (1999).

Current and recent international solo exhibitions include Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, Palazzo TE, Mantua, Italy (2025–2026); Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (2025); Isaac Julien: A Marvellous Entanglement, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Isaac Julien: Once Again...(Statues Never Die), Aaarhus, Denmark (2025) Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2024); Isaac Julien: Once Again...(Statues Never Die), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2024); Isaac Julien: Once Again...(Statues Never Die), Whitney Biennale, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2024); Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me, Tate Britain, London, UK; touring to K21, Dusseldorf, Germany; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2023-24); Isaac Julien: PLAYTIME, PalaisPopulaire, Berlin, Germany (2023); Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2023); Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Yale School of Architecture, Connecticut, USA (2023); Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2020) touring to Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NC, USA; Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2021-22) and Looking for Langston, Tate Britain, London, UK (2019).

Recent international group exhibitions include Too Late to Rewind: From the Collection of Elayne Mordes, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida, USA (2025); Paradigm Shift, 180 Strand, London, UK (2025); Victoria Miro: 40 Years, Victoria Miro, London, UK (2025); Other People Think – A Selection of the Collection Wemhöner, Marta Herford, Herford, Germany (2025); A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema, Milan Osservatorio, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2025); Language and Image: Conceptual and Performance Based Images from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami, USA (2025); Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2025); Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA (2025); Entangled Pasts, 1768–now, Royal Academy, London, UK (2024); A Model, Mudam – The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (2024); Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (2024); Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK, touring to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2022-23); Details of Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971, Academy Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2022) and Masculinities: Liberation through Photography​, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK, travelling to Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, among others (2020).

His work is in the collections of major museums including ARos, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; De Pont Museum Collection, Tilburg, Netherlands; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, USA; Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, USA; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; LUMA Foundation, Arles, France; M+ Museum, Hong Kong, China; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., USA; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Tate, UK; Towner Eastbourne and The Whitworth, UK (Moving Image Art Fund); Whitney Museum of Art, New York, USA and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.

In 2022, Julien received a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for the Platinum Jubilee year and was honoured with the esteemed Kaiserring Goslar Award.

In 2019, Julien was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Julien and independent curator and writer Mark Nash, the former head of contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in London, developed the Isaac Julien Lab at the UC Santa Cruz campus, which provides students with the opportunity to assist Julien and Nash with project research and the production of moving image and photographic works in California and London.