Isaac Julien’s Tate retrospective: multi-screens, ‘sonic tapestries’ and moments of joy
Artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien’s Tate Britain retrospective ‘What Freedom Is to Me’ questions histories, explores activism, but is also full of joy and beauty
![Isaac Julien Tate retrospective ‘What Freedom Is to Me’, men dancing](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tBfqrvJdG478oUQKw4FeSM-415-80.jpg)
Artist Isaac Julien’ first Tate retrospective covers 40 years of work specialising in film, photography and installation exploring activism, selfhood, how we make histories, knowledge and Black and queer identity.
The first thing you see in the exhibition, which takes its title from a Nina Simone quote, is a timeline of events that most affected the artist throughout his life, starting with his parents’ migration from Saint Lucia to the UK in the 1950s. This chronology – which sits opposite one of the earliest works in the show, Territories (1984), and This is Not an AIDS Advertisement (1987) – serves as a baseline for the exhibition, in which we see Julien’s work address these same issues as his practice evolves.
Isaac Julien at Tate Britain: ‘What Freedom Is to Me’
Installation view, Isaac Julien, Looking for Langston, Tate Britain, 2023
Installation view, Isaac Julien, Looking for Langston, Tate Britain, 2023
The show then opens with the artist’s most recent work, an inventive multi-channel piece about the life of writer and critic Alain Locke, Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022).
‘The [curation] has been in close dialogue with Isaac Julien from the outset, and that was something very important to us as curators, that we execute the vision as he conceived it, and I think it happened very organically,’ co-curator Isabella Maidment tells Wallpaper*.
Installation view, Isaac Julien, Lessons of the Hour, Tate Britain, 2023
Installation view, Isaac Julien, Lessons of the Hour, Tate Britain, 2023
Julien’s work is so aesthetically rewarding, its beauty is often what dominates your initial experience of it. So the starting and ending of the exhibition with these early works reminds us of the origins of his practice and of the socio-political context in which it was forged.
‘Even though I go on to make other works, which perhaps are concerned with different themes […] connected to art and modernism, or migration movements, or the museum itself, they’re still connected to these kinds of early works which, for me, have become foundational,’ Julien explains.
Installation view, Isaac Julien, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Tate Britain, 2023
The exhibition design by Adjaye Associates encourages the viewer to explore the space and walk in and out of the film works, which total about 4.5 hours (Tate also allows re-entry to the exhibition). The approach is in line with a theory of a mobile spectator that the artist has been developing in his practice, pushing the boundaries of how audiences engage with film and installation art. Another dimension to Julien’s work is sound, which he says is ‘50 per cent of the work’. Music plays a huge role in his films, as does the sound design, which adds to their transcendental quality.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
‘I think we’ve tried to create this sort of sonic tapestry, which whether it’s early work like Territories (1984) emulating scratch music… [or] Lina Bo Bardi - A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), which is about the influence that the Italian architect had on Brazilian and Afro Brazilian culture [but also] the effect Afro Brazilian culture had on the architect. What does it sound like? What does it signify or how does it feel to be in that culture?’
Isaac Julien, O que é um museu? / What is a Museum? (Lina Bo Bardi - A Marvellous Entanglement) 2019. Endura Ultra photograph facemounted
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. You can learn a lot from these deeply researched works, but you can also experience the joy and the beauty in them and realise, in this life, how important these things are.
Isaac Julien, ‘What Freedom Is to Me’, Tate Britain, London, 26 April – 20 August 2023
Isaac Julien, What Freedom is to me - Homage, 2022. Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag
Amah-Rose Abrams is a British writer, editor and broadcaster covering arts and culture based in London. In her decade plus career she has covered and broken arts stories all over the world and has interviewed artists including Marina Abramovic, Nan Goldin, Ai Weiwei, Lubaina Himid and Herzog & de Meuron. She has also worked in content strategy and production.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the Barbican
In Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize show
The artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Remembering Rusty Egan's Blitz Club: a place to 'avoid the mob and the homophobes', where the New Romantics were born
As he releases new vinyl boxset, 'Blitzed!', Wallpaper* meets DJ Rusty Egan to talk about London's scene-building Blitz club – the antidote to the late 70s punk scene and a hot-bed of experimental fashion
By Craig McLean Published
-
The body, pleasure and play: Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland united in London
Tom of Finland’s homoeroticism meets Beryl Cook’s female-oriented camp as Studio Voltaire unites work by the two artists in a London exhibition
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published
-
A pop-up gallery in Mayfair considers the real and the fake
PLP Architecture’s 60 Curzon in the heart of London is temporarily a gallery
By Clare Dowdy Published
-
Looking at people looking at art: inside the mind of a gallery attendant
Visitor experience workers at London’s Tate Modern, Serpentine, Barbican and V&A share what it’s like to watch people looking at art during a time of changing attention spans and rising vandalism
By Kyle MacNeill Published
-
Everything to see at London Gallery Weekend 2024
London Gallery Weekend 2024 highlights, from Nan Goldin to John Akomfrah, as 130-plus galleries and 70 live events take over the capital (31 May – 2 June)
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published