Currents 34: Isaac Julien

Exhibitions

Isaac Julien, True North, 2004.

Installation view, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee. Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures, New York, and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo by Tom Bamberger.

Overview

  • March 24, 2012–May 5, 2013

  • Contemporary Galleries

  • Free for Members

  • Included with admission

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, and global politics. Internationally recognized, Julien combines mesmerizing images with compelling audio tracks to create engaging and conceptually layered works.

Julien’s Expeditions trilogy—True North (2004), Fantôme Afrique (2005), and Western Union: Small Boats (2007), which the Milwaukee Art Museum recently acquired—is, for the first time, being presented together, sequentially, here at the Museum:

True North: March 24–May 9, 2012
Fantôme Afrique: May 10–June 17, 2012
Western Union: Small Boats: June 28, 2012–May 5, 2013

Throughout his career, Julien has explored issues relating to his gay identity and minority status. Recently, this has evolved into a profound investigation of the disenfranchised in the age of globalism.

Support

The acquisition of “Western Union: Small Boats” is funded by

  • Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society

  • Ralph and Cora Oberndorfer Family Trust

  • By exchange

Programming sponsors

  • Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Johnson and Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund

  • Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society

  • Milwaukee Art Museum’s African American Art Alliance