Lessons of the Hour at Social Works II

Curated by Antwaun Sargent, the group show Social Works II foregrounds artistic insights into the relationship between space—personal, public, institutional, and psychic—and social and artistic practice. Bringing together intergenerational artists working in different mediums, Social Works II considers geography and its role in informing how identity is created and experienced through communities and spaces.

Isaac Julien presents the London première of the single-screen version of Lessons of the Hour (2019), a contemplative journey into the life and work of Frederick Douglass, the visionary African American abolitionist. The film is presented here in a single-screen version, accompanied by a large-scale photograph (pictured) produced especially for the exhibition.

Social Works II underscores the artistic engagement with the cultural present where numerous social factors have converged to produce a heightened urgency for artists of the African diaspora to utilize space as a community-building tool and a means of creating visionary possibilities.