ROM Contemporary Culture to present Isaac Julien: Other Destinies
Julien’s work presented in Toronto in partnership with OCAD University and The Images Festival
ROM display will open from January 21 to April 23, 2017
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is delighted to present works from installation artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien this January in its 3rd Floor Centre Block. Isaac Julien: Other Destinies, presented by TD Bank Group, opens on Saturday, January 21 and will be on view until April 23, 2017. The exhibition consists of two film projections, WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (2007) and True North (2004), which address movements of people, aesthetics of geography and displacement. 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 key cultural thinker of our time and a renowned contemporary artist. 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, Curator of African Arts and Cultures, 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 Expedition 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 presents 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), 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 accompanied by a Q&A with artist Deanna Bowen about her Guggenheim fellow research on police violence within her own family history on both sides of the US and Canadian border.
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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Opened in 1914, the ROM is Canada’s largest museum of natural history and world cultures and has six million objects in its collections and galleries showcasing art, world cultures and natural history. The ROM is the largest field research institution in the country, and a world leader in research areas from biodiversity, palaeontology, and earth sciences to archaeology, ethnology and visual culture - originating new information towards a global understanding of historical and modern change in culture and environment. For tickets, memberships and 24-hour information in English and French, visit www.rom.on.ca or call 416.586.8000.