Two images next to each other. On left, line of people facing front from a still of NAMA; On bottom, image of actor portraying Frederick Douglass walking in tall grass with a horse.

SCMA Member Film Screening and Discussion Featuring FX Harsono: NAMA and Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour

June 7, 2022

4:15–5:15

Smith College Museum of Art

Members are invited to join SCMA curators Yao Wu, Jane Chace Carroll Curator of Asian Art and Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford '83 Curator of Contemporary Art, to view and discuss two recent film installations. Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour and FX Harsono NAMA.

These two films are in conjunction with Smith College’s 2021–22 campus-wide initiative, “Year on Democracies,” and examine notions of democracy nationally and globally.

The life and writings of the freedom fighter Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) inspired Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour (2019)

FX Harsono’s NAMA (2019) attempts to heal the trauma endured by the ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia.

Images: TOP FX Harsono. Indonesian (born 1949). NAMA (detail), 2019. Single-channel video, 5.1 surround sound; edition 1/10. Running time: 12 minutes. Purchased with the Carroll and Nolen Asian Art Acquisition Fund; BOTTOM Isaac Julien. Lessons of The Hour (Lessons of The Hour), 2019. Digital print on matt archival paper mounted on aluminum. 63 x 84 inches; 160 x 213.29 cm. © Isaac Julien. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.