Julianknxx: Chorus In Rememory Of Flight – Barbican, London

Julianknxx takes over the Barbican’s Curve space with a poetic film installation, Chorus in Rememory of Flight. A reminder of connection, tradition, and the long reach of history.

Julianknxx at the Barbican Curve

In today’s post we find ourselves back at one of London’s more intriguing spaces for art installations. The Barbican Curve makes use of the Barbican Centre’s brutalist forms to shape a long, curved (of course), gallery. Here at the Salterton Arts Review we’ve been to a few exhibitions in this space. It is best for immersive exhibitions of large-scale works, and doesn’t work particularly well with small formats. The last thing in here, Them’s the Breaks by RESOLVE Collective, was interestingly different in its participatory format, but ended early after a dispute. Let us hope some things have changed in the short interim.

The current exhibition is by Julianknxx. This is not the first time the Salterton Arts Review has encountered his work. Rather this is an artist whose star is on the rise. Julianknxx’s multidisciplinary work centres on poetry but also comprises film and performance. Born in Sierra Leone, he draws on West African oral history traditions to interrogate Western historical narratives. The Black experience is at the core of his work. He has been an artist in residence at 180 The Strand since 2020, and has participated in exhibitions in London, New York, Lisbon and beyond.

Chorus In Rememory Of Flight

This exhibition, Chorus in Rememory of Flight, is a remarkable achievement. In order to create the three films on view, Julianknxx travelled across Europe to cities with colonial pasts: Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, London, Marseille, Barcelona and Lisbon. In each place, the artist collaborated with Black people. Sometimes individuals, sometimes groups or communities. Some contributed choral performances, one memorable woman in Lisbon didn’t do anything other than allow Julianknxx to film her in bed, because she’s tired of talking about colonialism. Importantly, the contributions are on the participants’ own terms.

The space of the Barbican Curve helps the exhibition to develop logically. You start with the shortest and simplest film: choreographer Exocé Kasongo dances in a German subway. Shown across three screens, Julianknxx’s poetry is in dialogue with his movements and the othering gaze of passers-by. Next up is a work on seven screens in which a figure moves across huge concrete blocks. The artist’s poetry is one thread tying the two together.

As the voices in the third work call us closer, the other threads are apparent. The Black activists and performers Julianknxx sought out in each place are juxtaposed with more of his poetry, and footage of the European cities. Images of wealth and power, much of it derived directly or indirectly from the trade in enslaved people and extraction of wealth from Africa, are interspersed with people whose histories have been shaped by that trade. We hear the refrain again and again, “We are what is left of us”.

Black Identity In Europe

Visiting Chorus in Rememory of Flight brought to mind some of the ideas I’d read in an essay by Folakunle Oshun, curator of Lagos, Peckham, Repeat at the South London Gallery. Namely the idea of the Atlantic as a ‘continent in negative’, an identity formed by a process of migration rather than a geographical place. Here, Julianknxx’s own migratory path around Europe has drawn together disparate people in a shared narrative of common humanity and Black identity. It’s beautiful, powerful and poignant by turns.

The use of the voice in Julianknxx’s work is particularly interesting. The layers are many: oral history traditions, stories of resistance, memories of home, the power of poetry, and the communal experience of singing together. In all of his works I’ve seen so far, the beauty of the artist’s poetry coming to life in song has stayed with me. It’s such a powerful way to bring a performative permanence to something as potentially ephemeral and personal as the reading of a poem.

If you don’t have the opportunity to see Julianknxx: Chorus in Rememory of Flight while it’s on at the Barbican, supporters WePresent (a branch of WeTransfer) have provided interesting resources here. But if you can see it, please do. You will need just over an hour to see the films in full. And there’s an optional reading and resource room at the end.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Julianknxx: Chorus in Rememory of Flight on until 11 February 2024