ISAAC JULIEN

Early Career and Sankofa Collective

Isaac Julien began his career as an aspiring independent filmmaker while studying at Central Saint Martins in 1983, when he co-founded the Sankofa Film and Video collective with Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, and Robert Crusz. In his 2014 conversation with for Ocula Magazine, the artist described his years with Sankofa as being instrumental in his later practice, providing the drive and creative atmosphere to push for recognition.

New Queer Cinema and Early Films

Isaac Julien is a pioneer of New Queer Cinema, highlighting the black queer experience that is generally absent from mainstream films. Looking for Langston, which premiered at the 1989 Berlin International Film Festival, garnered critical acclaim for its seamless integration of documentary and fiction to examine American poet Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. In 1991, Julien won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Young Soul Rebels: a coming-of-age thriller set in the 1970s in London and revolving around the murder of a Black gay man.

Major Works and Themes

Colonisation and its ongoing legacy are common themes in Isaac Julien’s work, as can be seen in Vagabondia (2000). The seven-minute film, which was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001, follows a black female curator during a night inspection of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. Apparitions dwell about the premises, including Soane himself and a black male dancer whose presence perhaps references the colonial origins of the museum’s collection.

Julien also addresses migration, diaspora, and cultural displacement through fractured and overlapping film narratives. Western Union: Small Boats (2007), included in the inaugural Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), traces historical and contemporary migration stories, while the nine-screen film installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010), inspired by the death of 23 Chinese cockle-pickers in the 2004 Morecambe Bay disaster, weaves together China’s past and present.

The life and work of Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi has been central to Isaac Julien’s projects since 2012. Stones Against Diamonds (2015), presented at the 56th Venice Biennale, is a five-screen film installation inspired by a letter Bo Bardi wrote to her husband. In it, she explains her love for the organic beauty of uncut, semi-precious stones, which, in his film, Julien likens to the frozen landscape of Icelandic ice caves.

Stones Against Diamonds later developed into the film Lina Bo Bardi: A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), which combines elements of biopic with interlocking narratives characteristic of Julien’s work to commemorate Bo Bardi. Filmed on site at some of Bo Bardi’s most iconic works, among them the São Paulo Museum of Art, SESC Pompéia, and Teatro Oficina, Julien’s film contemplates her use of vernacular materials and her vision of architecture as a social space.

Recent Works and Exhibitions

Lessons of the Hour (2019), Julien’s exquisite ten-screen meditation on the life of visionary 19th-century African American writer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from May to September 2024. Across the 10 screens of this video installation, a nonlinear narrative melds Douglass’s life and work with excerpts from several of his speeches, literary works, and personal correspondence.

Once Again... (Statues Never Die) (2022) had its premiere at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, where it unfolded across five screens reflecting on the life and thought of Alain Locke (1885–1954), philosopher, educator, and cultural critic of the Harlem Renaissance. Played by André Holland, Locke urged members of the African diaspora to embrace African art in order to reclaim their cultural heritage. The installation includes sculptures by Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) and Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1985), opening up a conversation about Black artists’ legacies that extends across modern history.

In 2025, Isaac Julien premiered All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, a major new film installation commissioned to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy, where it was exhibited from October 2025 to February 2026. The ten-screen installation is a vivid, sweeping visual poem about change, transformation, adaptation, and survival, moving between science fiction, philosophy, ecology, and art to imagine new forms of life and identity beyond the human. The work was subsequently exhibited as a five-screen installation at Victoria Miro, London, from February to March 2026.

Isaac Julien Solo Exhibitions include:

Western Union: Small Boats, Neuberger Museum of Art, New York (2020); Lina Bo Bardi: A Marvellous Entanglement, Victoria Miro, London (2019); Playtime, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); Lessons of the Hour, Metro Pictures, New York (2019); Western Union: Small Boats, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2018); ‘I Dream a World’ Looking for Langston, Victoria Miro, London (2017).

A major retrospective titled Isaac Julien: I Dream a World was presented at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from April to July 2025, featuring 10 of Julien’s major works made across Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Americas between 1999 and 2022. The exhibition takes its name and inspiration from the Langston Hughes poem.

In April 2026, Museum Dreams, the first major retrospective in Italy dedicated to Isaac Julien’s work, opened at Gres Art 671 in Bergamo, bringing together five major large-scale film installations drawing on more than three decades of Julien’s practice.

Recognition and Honours

Isaac Julien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Arts in 2017, and was elected as a Royal Academician in the following year. In 2022, Julien was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for services to diversity and inclusion in art as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Birthday Honours List. That same year, he received the prestigious Goslar Kaiserring Award 2022 for breaking down the barriers between different artistic disciplines by drawing from film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture. In 2024, Julien was honoured with the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award, which celebrates the work of an artist who has made a profound contribution to a generation of artists.

**FAQs

What is Isaac Julien best known for?**

Isaac Julien is best known for his pioneering multi-screen film installations that explore race, sexuality, and postcolonial themes. His most acclaimed works include Ten Thousand Waves (2010), a nine-screen installation commemorating the 2004 Morecambe Bay tragedy in which over 20 Chinese cockle pickers drowned off the coast of England, and Looking for Langston (1989), his breakthrough drama-documentary exploring poet Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. Julien is also recognized as a pioneer of New Queer Cinema and for creating immersive installations that blend documentary, fiction, and poetic imagery.

What is Ten Thousand Waves about?

Ten Thousand Waves (2010) is a 55-minute, nine-screen film installation inspired by the tragic deaths of over 20 Chinese illegal migrant workers who drowned while picking cockles in Morecambe Bay, England, in 2004. The work poetically interweaves contemporary Chinese culture with ancient myths, including the fable of the sea goddess Mazu from Fujian Province, and features actress Maggie Cheung. By using water as a symbol of danger, trade, and economic power, Julien traces the workers back to their origins and examines the motivations of need and desire that drive people to undertake perilous journeys for a better life.

Why was Isaac Julien knighted?

Isaac Julien was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Birthday Honours List for his services to diversity and inclusion in art. This followed his earlier appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2017 for services to the arts. The knighthood recognized Julien’s decades-long contribution to expanding representation of Black and queer experiences in film and visual art, as well as his role as a Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

How can I learn more about Isaac Julien?

For an in-depth exploration of Isaac Julien’s practice, read Ocula’s 2014 interview with the artist. In the interview, Julien discusses his formative years with the Sankofa Film and Video collective, which he describes as “the motor drive that gave us the ability to do things independently in the future,” and reveals how pictorial composition from his painting studies at Central Saint Martins alongside Peter Doig remains central to his multi-screen films. He also reflects on his book Isaac Julien: RIOT (co-published by MoMA in 2014) and his commitment to making intellectually rigorous work that speaks to wide audiences without reducing complexity.

Where can I see Isaac Julien’s work?

Isaac Julien’s work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His most recent major installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis (2025) has been exhibited at Palazzo Te in Mantua, Victoria Miro Gallery in London, and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney. A comprehensive retrospective titled Museum Dreams is currently on view at Gres Art 671 in Bergamo, Italy, through 2026. Julien is represented by Victoria Miro in London, Jessica Silverman in San Francisco, and Galeria Nara Roesler in São Paulo.

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020