Isaac Julien: Looking for Langston
A photographic exhibition revisiting Isaac Julien’s seminal film Looking for Langston (1989).
Archived Event
| Dates | 18 – 29 May 2017 |
| Space | Studio Room South Wing |
| Price | Free |
Isaac Julien is an internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker. One of the objectives of his practice 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 them to construct a powerfully visual narrative.
This exhibition presents a body of work that revisits his seminal film Looking for Langston (1989), a poetic documentary and homage to Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. When Julien was preparing to make what would become this award-winning work, he studied the photographs of James Van der Zee, George Platt Lynes and Robert Mapplethorpe. This work is regarded as a cinematic landmark in the exploration of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze, created at a time when the AIDS crisis was at its height.