 – Just opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition “Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass” is an immersive and poetic meditation on this great…){kind=link}
RICHMOND, VA (PNAN) – Just opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition “Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass” is an immersive and poetic meditation on this great 19th-century abolitionist.
In this penetrating exhibition, it resonates an art experience of arresting visuals and sound by internationally renowned London-born artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien, who brings this historical figure, Frederick Douglass to clear focus for the next generation in a heart-rending 10-screen film installation, where images converge as a whole, then fragment into a montage; thusly collapses time and space to bridge persistent historical and contemporary challenges of the day.
Douglass was a masterful writer and orator, one of history’s greatest activists for freedom and equality, and an advocate for women’s suffrage, who escaped enslavement. To combat the disparaging depictions of African Americans as a means to justify bondage, he used the power of his image to shift cultural perspectives. In doing so, he became the most photographed individual of the 19th century.
In this installation, Julien’s narrative is informed by Douglass’s powerful speeches and includes excerpts from Lessons of the Hour: What to the Slave Is the 4th of July? and the prescient, Lecture on Pictures which examines the influence of technology and images on human relations.
Shakespearean actor Ray Fearon portrays Douglass within the film. Around his commanding visage, Julien weaves Douglass’s writings and filmed reenactments of the abolitionist’s travels in the United States, Scotland, and Ireland, along with contemporary protest footage that makes Douglass’s modern-day relevance and resonance undeniable.
Lessons of the Hour was organized for VMFA by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.