5 Works to Know by Artist and Filmmaker Isaac Julien

March 13, 2025

Photograph of man in white shirt on the right, facing a black statue on a white pedestal on the left, against a white background.

Isaac Julien, Black Madonna / New Negro Aesthetic (Once Again... Statues Never Die), 2022. Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag, 59 x 78 3/4 in (150 x 200 cm). © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

Over the past 25 years, artist Isaac Julien (b. 1960, London) has developed a singular style of moving-image art. His immersive multichannel video installations blend historical fact, speculative fiction, social critique, and spellbinding visuals. They reflect on political and cultural events that have shaped the lives of individuals around the world — especially those on the margins of society.

Here are five works to know from this influential artist.

1. Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) (2022)

Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) centers a fictional conversation on African art, held between Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a pioneering art collector who promoted inclusive education, and Dr. Alain Locke, a philosopher and art critic who was dubbed the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance.” Following Locke as he wanders the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the five-screen installation contemplates the politics of restitution of looted African objects and the creation of a distinct African American aesthetic.

2. Lessons of the Hour (2019)

Photograph of woman in a blue dress sitting on a chair facing toward the left side of the frame. She is sitting in a photo studio, with a big old camera and photo backdrop in the background.

Isaac Julien, The Lady of the Lake (Lessons of the Hour), 2019. Framed photograph on gloss inkjet paper mounted on aluminium, 63 x 84 in. (160 x 213.3 cm). © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Lessons of the Hour is a tribute to the life and work of visionary African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born in slavery in 1818. Douglass gained his freedom in 1838, around the same time photography became a widespread mass medium. Photographs were key to his civil rights activism, as he acutely understood the power of images in shaping people’s perceptions of African Americans. Julien’s video installation retraces episodes of Douglass’s life, connecting them to today’s political and social moment.

3. Ten Thousand Waves (2010)

Photograph of a Maggie Cheung in a white flowy dress with arms outstretched

Isaac Julien, Maiden of Silence (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010. Endura Ultra photograph, 70 7/8 x 94 1/2 x 3 in. (180 x 240 x 7.5 cm) © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Ten Thousand Waves confronts the tragedy of Morecambe Bay, in northwest England, where 23 undocumented Chinese migrants drowned while harvesting cockles on the evening of February 5, 2004. Spread across nine screens, and split between different places and times, the film provides a kaleidoscopic understanding of the disaster. The opening scene provides a haunting account of the tragedy, through archival images and sound recordings. The multiple screens allow for a visual exploration of China’s many sides. Archival footage of the country’s communist era is contrasted with bustling views of Shanghai today and picturesque shots of the Fujian province, the homeland of the cockle pickers.

4. True North (2004)

Photograph of a woman in a black winter jacket and a black fur hat looking to the left of the frame, against an arctic background with light blue ice and water.

Isaac Julien, True North Series, 2004. Digital print on Epson Premium Photo Glossy. 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 cm) © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

True North is a meditation on the role and recognition of Matthew Henson, the Black explorer who joined Robert Peary on a 1909 Arctic expedition. Henson arguably became one of the first people to reach the North Pole. His participation was seemingly erased from history — along with that of the Inuit guides — until he published his own account of the expedition. This video installation aims to unsettle dominant historical views — nationalist, masculinist, colonial, and scientific. It reimagines an Arctic where Black and Indigenous presences are reinstated.

5. Looking for Langston (1989)

Black and white photo of two men in tuxedos holding each other close while holding hands and dancing, against a smokey background.

Isaac Julien, Pas de Deux No. 2 (Looking for Langston Vintage Series), 1989/2016. Ilford classic silver gelatin fine art paper, mounted on aluminum and framed. Framed size 22 7/8 x 29 3/8 in. (58.1 x 74.5 cm). © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Looking for Langston is an imaginative and lyrical return to the Harlem Renaissance, the golden age of African American arts and culture centered in 1920s Harlem, New York. Set in the 1990s during the AIDS crisis, the film features the words and voices of Black queer poets Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Essex Hemphill. Layering images with poetic texts, a signature practice in Julien’s work, Looking for Langston is a hallmark of what film critic B. Ruby Rich termed New Queer Cinema. It is an opportunity to ponder questions of identity, power, and desire in the Black gay community.

See these works and more in Isaac Julien: I Dream a World on view from April 12, 2025 through July 13, 2025.