TORONTO, January 19, 2017 -- The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is delighted to present works by renowned contemporary installation artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien. Isaac Julien: Other Destinies, presented by TD Bank Group, will be on view from Saturday, January 21until April 23, 2017. The exhibition consists of two immersive film projections, WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (2007) and True North (2004), both addressing issues of globalization, movements of peoples, displacement, and the aesthetics of geography. The ROM’s installation of Isaac’s work is one of a three-part execution across Toronto, with programs at OCAD University and the Images Festival.
“Isaac Julien is a one of the most exciting and innovative intellectual thinkers working in the arts today. Through his work, he addresses difficult and sensitive issues in a poetic and visually engaging manner,” said Silvia Forni, ROM Curator of African Arts and Culture. “We are thrilled to share his work with ROM visitors, and together with OCAD University and the Images Festival, give Toronto audiences an opportunity to fully explore his practice.”
About Isaac Julien: Other Destinies
Organized by former Managing Director of ROM Contemporary Culture, Ann Webb, and Dr. Silvia Forni, Isaac Julien: Other Destinies features two installations:
WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (2007) is an immersive, multi-screen experience through which Isaac explores multiple themes including notions of diaspora and transnational identities. Part of Julien’s Expeditions trilogy, this powerful and visually engaging installation addresses the plight of people seeking a better life and the complex issues around migration.
True North (2004) contains reflective images of the sublime, using the landscape as a key location and theme, offering a fascinating, new visual reading of space and time and its relation to counter histories. It is inspired by the story of Matthew A. Henson, African American explorer and one of the first people to reach the North Pole accompanying Robert E. Peary.
The ROM will also present a series of programs to complement the exhibition, including a keynote lecture titled Isaac Julien in His Own Words on January 24, 2017. The artist will discuss the inspiration behind the work in Isaac Julien: Other Destinies and more recent developments of his oeuvre. His presentation will be followed by a conversation with Professor Michael Prokopow of OCAD University.
About Isaac Julien
London-based artist Isaac Julien is a pioneering film and video artist whose multi-screen installations display rich narrative imagery that address issues of migration, race, gender and globalization. Internationally recognized, Julien combines mesmerizing images with compelling audio tracks to create engaging and conceptually layered works. Since 1982, Julien’s works have been shown at film festivals, museums, and galleries around the world. His works are in public and private collections including the Tate (London), the MoMA (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Guggenheim Museum (New York), among others. He has participated in the 7th Gwangiu Biennale, Sydney Biennale, the 8th Shanghai Biennale and the 2015 Venice Biennale. Julien has won numerous awards including the Semaine de la Critique prize (Cannes Film Festival), and the Eugene McDermott Award (MIT). He has held academic and other posts including Professor of Media Studies at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Gestaltung Karlsruhe (2008 - 2014); Faculty Member, Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (1991- present); Professor of English, Visiting Mellon Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh (2006-2007); Visiting lecturer at Schools of Afro-American Studies, Harvard (1998 - 2002) and; Research Fellow, Goldsmiths College, University of London (1998 - 2003)
About OCAD University
OCAD U will host Isaac Julien as the inaugural Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation Global Experience Project Artist in Residence. This groundbreaking residency will be located at OCAD U in Toronto and at Mr. Julien’s studio in London, England. This OCAD University-lead research project will, under Mr. Julien’s guidance and artistic inspiration, have students investigate his development as an artist, probe the important political and aesthetic themes that drive his practice, and experience first-hand dimensions of his artistic practice.
The Global Experience Project will benefit further from a new graduate studies course, Inside Museological Practices, developed by OCAD University and the Royal Ontario Museum. Julien’s work will be central to undergraduate and graduate students’ considerations of how diverse publics are challenged, stimulated and animated to thought and action through institutionally imbedded exhibitions. The course will also interrogate how what is best called engagement is encouraged through an interaction between the artist and a citizenry. There will be strong academic focus on notions of queerness, migration, global capitalism, and the aesthetics of power as it is thematically, conceptually and visually explored in Julien’s work.
About Images Festival
The Images Festival will screen at the ROM the film Who Killed Colin Roach? on Friday, February 3, 2017. The screening will be followed by remarks from poet and journalist Clifton Joseph from the perspective of dub poetry both in London and in Toronto, and the role of poetry and art in community activism.
In addition, during the 30th annual Images Festival, Isaac Julien be the International Artist Spotlight. The 30th edition of Images runs April 20 – 27 in locations across Toronto.
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Isaac Julien: Other Destinies presented by:
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ABOUT THE ROM
Opened in 1914, the ROM’s collections comprise over six million objects and specimens and its galleries showcase art, culture, and nature. Among the world’s most renowned museums, the ROM is Canada’s largest with the dual mandate of natural history and world cultures. The Renaissance ROM expansion project (2007) retrieved the best of the Museum’s beautiful historic architecture while also merging its iconic heritage building with the Studio Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. The ROM is the country’s largest field research institution and a world leader in areas encompassing biodiversity, palaeontology, and earth sciences to archaeology, ethnology, and visual culture—originating new information towards a global understanding of historical and modern change in the natural and cultural worlds. For tickets and 24-hour information in English and French, visit www.rom.on.ca or call 416.586.8000. For Membership enquiries, please call 416.586.5700