Isaac Julien
Born 1960 in London, UK; lives in London, UK, and Santa Cruz, CA
Once Again... (Statues Never Die), 2022 Five-channel 4K video and 35mm film transferred to high-definition video, black-and-white, 9.2 surround sound; 31:32 min.
Commissioned by Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and Ford Foundation, New York; co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Courtesy the artist
Unfolding across five screens, Once Again... (Statues Never Die) reflects on the life and thought of Alain Locke (1885-1954), philosopher, educator, and cultural critic of the Harlem Renaissance (played by André Holland) who 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. Julien has described the work as a form of "poetic restitution," speaking to the ways museums have collected African art. The artist refines this critique by creating a visual and sonic meditation as a "diasporic dream-space."
In the work, Locke contemplates the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford-where he was the first Black Rhodes Scholar-and the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, founded by one of Locke's interlocutors, Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), played by Danny Huston. Barnes also debates a skeptical Locke on his heritage, a sequence that distills many of the questions that the installation raises: Who gets to define Black modernism? Who has the authority to speak? How do men negotiate power, or queer desire?
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