ISAAC JULIEN United Kingdom
ST PAUL ST

Excerpted from True North: A conversation between Isaac Julien and Cheryl Kaplan

Cheryl Kaplan: “In True North, the narrative is slowly let out under the weight of a stark and overwhelming landscape that could suddenly go silent. Why is the relationship between narrative and landscape a trigger point?”

Isaac Julien: "The sublime enters into True North strongly. We can think of people like Caspar David Friedrich, the painter I’m interested in, the materiality of the land itself, and the Arctic, where True North is meant to be based, though it was actually shot in Northern Sweden and Iceland. These are not empty landscapes, emptied of people or history or meaning. They’re inhabited by a people. This is looked upon as a space for possible colonization; the Inuit folks and culture were there. In True North, I’m trying to link that history with an actual landscape and the unwritten historical legacy of the first person to actually reach the North Pole, who was indeed not Peary, but Matthew Henson, an African American. There’s beauty to ice and a deathly attraction we have towards that space. The narrative is elliptical and poetic."

Isaac Julien, in conversation with Cheryl Kaplan, db artmag, 2005
Courtesy Cheryl Kaplan. © Cheryl Kaplan, 2005. All rights reserved.
to read the full interview see db artmag

Background

Isaac Julien was born in London in 1960, where he continues to live and work. His early work was the subject of the exhibition, The Film Art of Isaac Julien, shown in 2000 at Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, touring to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; BildMuseet, Umea; Henie Onstad Museum, Oslo; Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco, 2000-2. More recent solo exhibitions include Isaac Julien: Baltimore, The Aspen Art Museum, 2003; True North, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2004; Isaac Julien: Fantôme Creole, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005; Isaac Julien, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2005; Isaac Julien, Brandström Stene, Stockholm; and Isaac Julien, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, 2006. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001, Julien's work was included in Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002; Whitney Biennial, 2004; Busan Biennial, 2004; 3rd Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art, 2004 and 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2005. Other group exhibitions include The Projected Image, Tate Modern, London, 2005; Vidéodanse 2006, Centre Pompidou; Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now, Tate Liverpool, 2006; and Contemporary Commonwealth, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2006. For further reading on the artist, see Veit Görner and Eveline Bernasconi, eds., Isaac Julien: True North-Fantome Afrique, 2006.

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