San Antonio, Texas. ART Magazine.
The three-screen edition of Ten Thousand Waves by Isaac Julien is currently on display at the Linda Pace Foundation. Co-commissioned by the Foundation in 2009, Ten Thousand Waves was filmed on location in China conceived and created over four years. Julien collaborated with some of China’s leading artistic voices, including: the legendary siren of Chinese cinema Maggie Cheung; rising star of Chinese film Zhao Tao; poet Wang Ping; master calligrapher Gong Fagen; artist Yang Fudong; acclaimed cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi; and a 100-strong Chinese cast and crew. The film’s original musical score was created by East Londoner, Jah Wobble and the Chinese Dub Orchestra, and contemporary classical composer Maria de Alvear. Ten Thousand Waves poetically weaves together stories linking China’s ancient past and present. Connecting social, psychological, aesthetic, mythic, and spiritual dimensions, the artist engages the viewer with poetic beauty while encouraging the critical inquiry of Western-centric cultural globalization. Originally inspired by the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, in which 23 Chinese cockle-pickers died, Ten Thousand Waves, as the artist explains, connects Shangai’s past with its present to portray the Chinese’s transition into modernization and its strive towards a “Better Life”.
In this three-screen edition dedicated to Linda Pace, the viewer is submerged into the narrative. Different visual and conceptual perspectives are played at the same time, creating a grasp and a sense of reality that is impossible to obtain in real life. If we are standing at a corner in the street our perspective will be different than if we are inside the car crossing by, so every second we lose a big part of the whole reality. In the three-screen edition of Ten Thousand Waves, Isaac Julien, creates a narrative in which we are not only standing in the corner of that street and we are sitting in the car crossing by at the same time, but we are also put in the shoes of different characters understanding their place and perspective.
Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, England, where he currently resides and works. He has received numerous awards, including a nomination for the Turner Prize and the MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts in 2001,the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the Aurora Award in 2005. Julien is represented in the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim and Hirshhorn Collections, and the Linda Pace Foundation. In his work, Isaac Julien explores different artistic disciplines in his work, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, the artist unites them to create a unique poetic visual language in audio-visual film installations.
Ten Thousand Waves will be on public display until June 30th at the Linda Pace Foundation. For an appointment to attend this exhibition, please contact them by phone 210.226.6663 or email visit@pacefound.org.
