Isaac Julien’s 2022 series Once Again... Statues Never Die is inspired by his extensive research into the work and critical writing of Alain Locke (1885–1954), leader of the Harlem Renaissance, and his relationship to Albert C. Barnes, the philanthropist, pioneering art collector and founder of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.

In Julien’s work, the totality of the artistic environment includes his photographic artworks as well as his moving- image installations, and in the case of Once Again... (Statues Never Die) those atmospheres are created between the political reality of racism and class discrimination, and the use of ‘critical fabulation,’ a speculative storytelling inhabiting what writer bell hooks describes as ‘the mystical diasporic dream-space.’

The portraits of André Holland as Alain Locke and Alex Part as his alter ego in Diasporic Dream-Space Diptych (2022) create a stunning pair of two figures suspended in time under the falling snow, and this changing weather is where ‘a culture of infinite possibility is ready to receive us. This is artistic freedom as pure and unsullied as falling snow – as snow so deep it remains undisturbed – a whiteout.’ These images encapsulate this diasporic dream-space; they are about the imaginative possibilities.