Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me (Paperback)

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Set against the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, it tells the story of two young Black men, Chris and Caz, as they navigate the joys and difficulties of race, sexuality and class in 1970s London. He became acquainted with the fables of Mazu, a 15th-century deity from the Fujian province, from where the cockle pickers had also travelled. Shot in hypnotic black and white with all the harsh edges smoothed off, we see a series of imagined conversations between cultural theorist Alain Locke, the first Black Rhodes scholar, and the US collector of African art Albert C.

From a clearing of sorts, the viewer is then invited to choose their path as a narrative unfolds based on that decision. He has said of “Looking for Langston,” an iconic piece from 1989, “Before I was looking, I was listening.With a combined run time of approximately three and a half hours, visitors must make sure to carve out enough time to marvel at the works and to preferably decompress with a drink to accompany the food for thought.

But it was this sense of giving over oneself and one’s most valuable asset—one’s time—that was embodied in the exhibition design. The abolitionist and freedom fighter Frederick Douglass, played by Ray Fearon, gives a visionary lecture to an audience of Edinburgh Victorians, two of whom are moved to make their own protest in crinolines, while his second wife sits stitching a blue coat for him and his (abandoned) first wife sits pensively for a daguerreotype: the shadow of her existence caught on camera. My discomfort of the emotional rollercoaster was swiftly remedied by the zen of Ten Thousand Waves (2010). The film opens with an imaginary vision of Hughes’s funeral, the deceased played by Julien himself, motionless against white drapes in a coffin. In an exploration of the life and times of abolitionist Frederick Douglas (1818-1895), Julian uses some of his most potent words here.Adjaye’s team has also designed Julien’s imminent career retrospective at Tate Britain, which will display the artist and film-maker’s exploration of migration, history, sexuality and culture through composite multiscreen installations that can make you feel as if you’re actually inside the work. View image in fullscreen An installation view of Julien’s Once Again… (Statues Never Die), 2022 at Tate Britain. The intention of the artist, curators, and designer seems to be that the viewer become completely immersed within Julien’s filmic expression.