Isaac Julien is certainly capable of covering the political turf. Not only is he directing the continuous reading of all three volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, which forms the bedrock of Okwui Enwezor’s Biennale exhibition, The State of Things, but this Venice Biennale also finds the versatile British artist unveiling Stones Against Diamonds, a new film installation that has been commissioned by that ultimate symbol of capitalism: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
At the launch of the five-screen work, which pays homage to the Brazilian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi and involved Julien and a 50-strong crew spending two weeks filming in the wilderness of Iceland, the artist declared that the Rolls-Royce commission provided a “more poetic” counterpoint to the live rendering of Marx’s classic critical analysis of the political economy. However, in this case commerce does not ultimately prevail. Following its public exhibition at Art Basel in June when it goes on show in the Elisabethenkirche, the artist will then donate Stones Against Diamonds to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.
