Isaac Julien

Born in 1960, Isaac Julien lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, California. He has been making films and producing film installations for over forty years, including Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass (2019), Stones Against Diamonds (2015), PLAYTIME (2014), Ten Thousand Waves (2010), Western Union: Small Boats (2007), Fantôme Afrique (2005), True North (2004), Baltimore (2003), Paradise Omeros (2002), Vagabondia (2000), and Long Road to Mazatlan (1999).

Recent international solo exhibitions include Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (2025); Isaac Julien: A Marvellous Entanglement, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2024); Isaac Julien: Once Again...(Statues Never Die), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2024); Isaac Julien: Once Again...(Statues Never Die), Whitney Biennale, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2024); Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me, Tate Britain, London, UK; touring to K21, Dusseldorf, Germany; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2023-24); Isaac Julien: PLAYTIME, PalaisPopulaire, Berlin, Germany (2023); Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2023); Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Yale School of Architecture, Connecticut, USA (2023); Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2020) touring to Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NC, USA; Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2021-22) and Looking for Langston, Tate Britain, London, UK (2019).

Recent international group exhibitions include Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2025); Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA (2025); Entangled Pasts, 1768–now, Royal Academy, London, UK (2024); A Model, Mudam – The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg (2024); Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (2024); Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK, touring to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2022-23); Details of Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971, Academy Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2022) and Masculinities: Liberation through Photography​, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK, travelling to Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, among others (2020).

In 2022, Julien received a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for the Platinum Jubilee year and was honoured with the esteemed Kaiserring Goslar Award.

In 2019, Julien was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Julien and independent curator and writer Mark Nash, the former head of contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in London, developed the Isaac Julien Lab at the UC Santa Cruz campus, which provides students with the opportunity to assist Julien and Nash with project research and the production of moving image and photographic works in California and London.