Jules Julien x Obama Presidential Center

This week, the Obama Presidential Center opens its doors in Chicago, a landmark institution on the South Side of the city where Barack and Michelle Obama began their journey. The 19.3-acre campus houses a museum, a public library, a Great Lawn, and one of the most ambitious public art programs in recent memory: over 28 site-specific commissions by artists from around the world.

The roster is extraordinary. Commissioned artists include Nick Cave, Jenny Holzer, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Theaster Gates, Mark Bradford, Maya Lin, Julie Mehretu and Jules Julien, the French visual artist who lives and works in Amsterdam and is represented by Bisou Gallery.

Over the past two years, Julien worked closely with the Obama Foundation to create two permanent works for the museum.

The first, All Together, is an immersive digital mural displayed on a large circular screen on the fifth floor. Built from more than one million individually placed and colored dots, the mural presents eleven scenes from everyday life, going to school, receiving medical care, reuniting with loved ones, each tied to a theme from President Obama's vision. 

The work is interactive: visitors can add their name to the mural at stations in the installation, becoming part of the image itself. The concept draws on Obama's words 'Make our Hopes Reality', and on the dot as a form, the first letter of his name, the shape of the Foundation's logo, and the idea that individual action, multiplied, becomes something much larger.

The second, The Balance of Power, is a triptych of large printed murals in the Civics gallery on the third floor, an educational space dedicated to American democracy. The three panels each feature an iconic American symbol corresponding to one of the three branches of government: the Statue of Liberty, the American flag, and the Capitol, tracing a line between power and artistic form.

Jules Julien's work is known for its extraordinary precision. His digital drawings are made entirely by hand, line by line, dot by dot, a process that produces images so refined that gallery visitors have mistaken them for photographs. The Obama commission is among the most ambitious projects of his career.