Like all the historic characters that fascinate Julien, Bo Bardi is a rich subject for study, and eminently quotable (“I’m as horrified by air conditioners as I am by carpets!”). We find her pontificating about the role of the museum in contemporary culture (condemned now as a space for things out of date), and the nature of time: “Linear time is a Western invention: time is not linear, it’s a marvellous entanglement.” That’s true, and while Julien’s work is admirably academic, rich in research and singular points of view, it is also possible, when you are watching the snow fall in Once Again… (Statues Never Die) or the calligraphy strokes in Ten Thousand Waves, that the outside world may disappear for a transcendent moment or two. “That could be a response, and that would be great,” Julien says, a little enigmatically. “That would be a raison d’être, so to speak.” Julien doesn’t just make films, he intervenes in the museum: “Radically and aesthetically, I want to aim for an experience that can offer a novel way to see moving images, in its choice of subject, in how it’s displayed, in how it’s been shot … in every aspect.” When it works well, the spectator feels part of that intervention, empowered, emboldened, and hopeful for the possibilities that arise from Julien’s works. In doing this, the artist holds up a (metaphorical) Soanian convex mirror to its audience and wonders if, confronted with both the official narrative of the museum and its contents alongside a more affective interpretation, our views on the repatriation of historic artefacts would be quite as certain as we might think they are.

The essayshighlight Julien’s critical thinking and the way his work breaks down barriers between different artistic disciplines, drawing from film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture by using the themes of desire, history and culture. Filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien KBE RA, was born in 1960 in London. His work breaks down the barriers between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting, and sculpture, and uniting them to construct powerful visual narratives through multi-screen film installations. His 1989 documentary-drama exploring author Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance titled Looking for Langston garnered Julien a cult following while his 1991 debut feature Young Soul Rebels won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival.Julien’s work draws from so many areas: film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting, sculpture and more. The love for dance is evident in how people move within these films, across them and between time. These are weavings of artistic disciplines, collaged and montaged to fill the imagination. And they are exhilarating to experience.

The following year, 21-year-old Colin Roach was shot at the entrance to Stoke Newington Police Station and this time Julien felt he had to respond. “I was determined,” he said, “to appropriate video art techniques and repurpose them for the street.” Made with Sankofa Film and Video Collective, Who Killed Colin Roach?, 1983 records the demonstrations that followed and the Roach family’s demand for a public enquiry. What links both films within the exhibition is the notion of representing architecture on screen and in this it is, I think, singularly unique. Even with the ability to navigate the museum virtually with its ethereal, again uncanny, 3D scan, you are no closer to genuinely understanding the experience of being in the building. Julien has previously exhibited at venues including Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), Art Institute of Chicago (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2012), and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2005). He participated in the Venice Biennale at the inaugural Diaspora Pavilion at the 57 th edition in 2017 with Western Union: Small Boats. Previously, he presented Kapital and directed Das Kapital Oratorio in the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, in 2015. His work has also been exhibited in the 7th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2008); Prospect 1, New Orleans (2008); Performa 07, New York (2007) and in documenta 11, Kassel (2002). One of the leading artists working today, Isaac Julien is internationally acclaimed for his compelling lyrical films and video art installations. This ambitious solo show will chart the development of his pioneering work in film and video over four decades from the 1980s through to the present day, revealing a career that remains as fiercely experimental and politically charged as it was forty years ago.

Charting 40 years of the film-maker’s career, this exhibition immerses its audience in slavery, immigration and homophobia. This is cultural activism at its best

The photography and films at the Tate are amazing to see individually while powerful when viewed collectively. “Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me” reads a little like a conversation, one that takes place between the artist and his past, between poignant historical narratives, between time, space and culture, and between us, the viewer, and the art. Confused? Me too. I can’t find a satisfactory way of responding to Isaac Julien’s installations. Trying to follow them rationally is frustrating because too much is happening at once. Regarding them as visual spectacle is more rewarding because of their beauty, but then you miss the points they are making. And since Julien’s work is fundamentally political, not to engage with the message seems like a cop out. “This gradual increase in scale– from one screen to two, to three, to five and so on,” he says, “has always been in service to ideas and theories.” Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is to Me is a retrospective of the London-born artist/filmmaker’s 40-year career. Ingenious design by Julien in collaboration with architect David Adjaye makes the exhibition’s central atrium into something akin to the Wood Between the Worlds in CS Lewis’s Narnia, where pools of water are portals into any number of different worlds. Here, different coloured, carpeted corridors lead off into the various realms created by the artist, from 1920s and 1930s Harlem with his film about the poet Langston Hughes, to a documentary about Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, to a tragic piece about the 23 Chinese workers who drowned in Morecambe Bay in 2004. Some films are represented by vivid red, others teal and so on. It’s a striking conceit and works well the material. Visitors are given a precis of the work, a small-screen preview and its runtime, before taking the plunge. According to his cinematographer Nina Kellgren, Julien is a “poet” and a “painter” who “trades on the fact that we can all speak images”. If so, he’s fluent in the visual languages of commercial advertising and music videos; on at least one occasion, he even deploys dry ice. Everything is glossy. Nothing is real. For me the revelation here is Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), an homage to the Italian-born Brazilian architect, in which her words are spoken by actresses of two different generations, and her spaces and structures animated by dancers.