Isaac Julien b. 1960
Encore: Tabula Rasa (Ten Thousand Waves) (2010)
11 minutes

Isaac Julien is a video artist and a filmmaker who weaves powerful visual narratives when creating his multi-screen installations. The artist’s practice successfully dissolves the separations that are traditionally associated with different creative disciplines, uniting film and photography, dance and movement, theatre, music and sound art, and painting and sculpture. With works that often explore themes of class, cultural history and identity, this exclusive new media artwork Encore: Tabula Rasa (Ten Thousand Waves) relates to Julien’s nine-screen installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010), which examines the relationship between China's ancient past and rapidly-evolving present. In Latin, the term tabula rasa means blank slate, and here, we witness the cyclic depiction and erasure of traditional Chinese calligraphy, in a dance between older and newer generations.