Isaac Julien

Sir Isaac Julien CBE RA (born 21 February 1960) is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Julien was born in the East End of London, one of the five children of his parents, who had migrated to Britain from St Lucia. He graduated in 1985 from Saint Martin's School of Art, where he studied painting and fine art film. He co-founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1983, and was a founding member of Normal Films in 1991.

In 1980, Julien organized the Sankofa Film and Video Collective with, among others, Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, which was "dedicated to developing an independent black film culture in the areas of production, exhibition and audience". He received a BA Honours degree in Fine Art Film and Video from Saint Martins School of Art, London (1984), where he worked alongside artists, film-makers and lecturers Malcolm Le Grice, William Raban, Anna Thew, Tina Keane, Vera Neubauer, and co-students, directors and film-makers Adam Finch, Richard Heslop and Sandra Lahire, and completed his postdoctoral studies at Les entrepreneurs de l'audiovisuel européen, Brussels (1989).

Julien achieved prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. His following grew when his film Young Soul Rebels won the Semaine de la Critique prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991.

One of the objectives of Julien's work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting these to construct a powerfully visual narrative. Thematically, much of his work directly relates to experiences of black and gay identity (he is himself gay), including issues of class, sexuality, and artistic and cultural history.

Julien is a documentary filmmaker, and his work in this genre includes BaadAsssss Cinema, a film on the history and influence of blaxploitation cinema.

In 2014, Julien presented his exhibition Ten Thousand Waves at Fotografiska Stockholm.

In 2023, the Tate Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his work titled What Freedom Is to Me. The exhibition was set to open at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastrict in March 2024.