Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die)

‘Julien seems keenly aware that any encounter with the historical past is invariably a double-sided affair, with the present inevitably reinterpreting the past as much as the past might seek to guide the present.’ — Andrew V. Uroskie, Artforum

Once Again… (Statues Never Die) explores the relationship between Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’. The work examines the significant and often neglected place of African objects in numerous collections of western art museums. Utilising poetic reparation and historical archives – drawing on Julien’s extensive research in the archives of the Barnes Foundation – the film explores the reciprocal impact of Locke’s political philosophy and cultural organising activities on Dr. Barnes’s pioneering art collecting and his democratic, inclusive educational enterprise.

Once Again… (Statues Never Die) stars actor André Holland (Moonlight and Passing) as Alain Locke, Danny Huston (Succession and Marlowe) as Dr. Barnes, rising star Devon Terrell as sculptor Richmond Barthé, and Sharlene Whyte (Small Axe and Lessons of the Hour) as the curator. It also features a special appearance by singer and songwriter Alice Smith.

Once Again… (Statues Never Die) was commissioned by and premiered at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, in 2022. It has subsequently been presented as part of the artist’s major survey exhibition, Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me, held at Tate Britain (2023), travelling to K21, Düsseldorf (2023–2024) and Bonnefanten, Maastricht (2024), and in the institutional group exhibitions Sharjah Biennial (2023); A Model, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2024); Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024). In September 2024, the work will be shown at MCA Sydney.

Acclaim for Once Again… (Statues Never Die)

‘Isaac Julien’s masterful video… remakes the dialogue between the Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke and the collector-philanthropist Albert C. Barnes, and there is an absorbing discussion of how Europeans and Americans viewed African sculpture — and the responses of Black versus white artists and collectors to such objects.’
– Martha Schwendener, The New York Times

‘In Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022, Julien seems keenly aware that any encounter with the historical past is invariably a double-sided affair, with the present inevitably reinterpreting the past as much as the past might seek to guide the present.’
– Andrew V. Uroskie, Artforum

‘In just a few deft strokes… Julien synthesizes and distills a series of fraught and ongoing debates around European modernism, African art, colonialism and restitution. The editing and casting, the use of music, and Julien’s poetic imagery all imbue his heady themes with a rich humanity, reeling in lofty ideas, linking them to desiring bodies and credible psychologies’
– Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post

‘These images encapsulate this diasporic dream-space; they are about the imaginative possibilities.’ — Isaac Julien

The portraits of Alex Part as Beauty (a reprisal of the character in Looking for Langston) and André Holland as Alain Locke in Diasporic Dream Space Diptych create a stunning visual diptych of two figures suspended in time under the falling snow, and this changing weather is where, as bell hooks writes, ‘a culture of infinite possibility is ready to receive us. This is artistic freedom as pure and unsullied as falling snow – as snow so deep it remains undisturbed – a whiteout.’ These images encapsulate this diasporic dream-space; they are about the imaginative possibilities.

These and other photographic artworks contain visual references to Julien’s seminal film Looking for Langston, 1989, whose pioneering theme of the queer subculture of 1920s Harlem is further explored in Once Again… (Statues Never Die) through its reflection on the relationship between Alain Locke and the sculptor Richmond Barthé. For this, Barthé’s sculptures were staged at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).

In his research for Looking for Langston, Julien came across an archival image of Richmond Barthé and Alain Locke in an art gallery. Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) was a well-known African American sculptor who established his first studio in Harlem in 1930 and had a successful career throughout his lifetime.

Iolaus / In the Life alludes to a colloquialism ‘in the life’ – a Black gay term from that period (‘you’re in the life’) – and is a reference to Locke’s and Barthé’s romantic engagement as occasional lovers. Julien refers to these photographs as ‘echoes’. Iolaus is Hercules’ nephew famed for being one of the Argonauts and is also the name Barthé gave to his house when he relocated to Jamaica, having become disillusioned with New York City, fame and the art world.

Music and rhythm are alluded to in a number of the works in the series. Julien thinks of the melody behind Sonata as being a song of a late hour in 1920s Harlem, while André Holland as Alain Locke lays his shadow on the wall behind him as he descends the stairs to meet his lover in the notes of the night, a direct homage to Julien’s 1989 film Looking for Langston; in this work he returns to the site of that film.

Works such as Black Apollo diptych contain references to Black Athena history, the African presence in the ancient civilisations, and to Albert Barnes’s interest in art collecting. These images interweave Grecian and Roman idioms with classical Nubian sculpture. They speak of the importance of the spaces between when portraying objects and people in still life and sculpture. The figure is becoming a statue, becoming an object – also becoming a classical mythological hero. The works are a testimony to the plurality of media in the history of Black art and in Julien’s work, in painting and sculpture, film and photography.

A series of photographic still life works is dedicated to the archival periodicals of the 1920s. The visual motif of the photograph Harlem on My Mind is seen in the special edition of Survey Graphic magazine entitled Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro. Published in March 1925, the same year as Alain Locke’s influential anthology The New Negro, the periodical’s first article Enter the New Negro introduces the theme of the ‘Old’ versus the ‘New Negro’, a motif that Locke explores in The New Negro, the definitive text of the Harlem Renaissance. The cover featured the renowned tenor and composer Roland Hayes (1887–1977) in a portrait by Winold Reiss (1886–1953), who also created a portrait of Locke in the same year.

‘The camera holds the moment of a calm triumph, of introspection and haunting memory, as Alice Smith embodies the beautiful as a necessary act of political resistance and lets all worldly things go.’ — Isaac Julien

‘Once again, I defend my open heart, no question. My old ways, bad old days pass me by like the weather,’ the celebrated American vocalist Alice Smith sings in the piece written and composed for Julien’s five-screen moving image installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die). Smith is the central motif of the photographic artwork Once Again. Time is seen here as repetition; as a revisit, a return. In the photograph, the camera holds a moment of a calm triumph, of introspection and haunting memory, as Alice Smith embodies the beautiful as a necessary act of political resistance and lets all worldly things go.

Born in 1960, Isaac Julien lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, California. Recent international solo and group exhibitions include: Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, MoMA, New York, USA (on view until 28 September 2024); Isaac Julien: Once Again…(Statues Never Die), Whitney Biennale, Whitney Museum of American Art, USA; Isaac Julien: Ten Thousand Waves, Espace Louis Vuitton Osaka, Japan; Entangled Pasts, 1768–now, Royal Academy, London, UK; Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, Tang Teaching Museum, New York, USA; A Model, Mudam – The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg; Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (all 2024); Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me, Tate Britain, London, UK; touring to K21, Germany; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2023–2024); Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. USA; Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Oregon, USA; I Am Seen…Therefore, I Am: Isaac Julien and Frederick Douglass, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut, USA; Isaac Julien: PLAYTIME, PalaisPopulaire, Germany; Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA; Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Yale School of Architecture, Connecticut, USA (all 2023); Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, USA; Isaac Julien, Goslar Kaiserring, Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar, Germany; Details of Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971, Academy Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK, touring to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2022–2023).

In 2024, Julien was elected as a Fellow of The British Academy.

In 2023, Julien was ranked fifth in the Art Review ‘Power 100’ list.

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.

In 2017, Julien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List and was the recipient of The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award.