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Isaac Julien: Screening and Talk

Monday, October 13th | Triskel Arts Centre | 2.30pm | Admission Free.

Isaac Julien visits Cork presenting his most recent short work Baltimore and discussing his work in general. Rich in urban imagery, Baltimore uses museums as a key location and theme. Inspired by blaxploitation movies, Julien appropriates the styles, gestures, language and iconography of the genre to create a work that defies easy categorisation. Starring veteran black actor and director, Melvin van Peebles, Baltimore was designed in part as homage to Van Peebles movies. It unites three Baltimore institutions -The Walter's Art Museum, The Contemporary Art Museum and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, (where Van Peebles encounters his own image) ' with blaxploitation cinema, the tough talking, hard - living symbol of black empowerment that Van Peebles helped to usher in with his 1971 movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Baltimore is ironic and funky, nostalgic and futuristic, rough and fine. It is characterised by oscillation and an insistent formal play with linear perspective which also pays homage to Piero della Francesca's painting The Ideal City.

Presented in association with The Sculpture Factory