[3] Julien was born in the East End of London, one of the five children of his parents, who had migrated to Britain from St Lucia.

He received a BA Honours degree in Fine Art Film and Video from Saint Martins School of Art, London (1984),[4] where he worked alongside artists, film-makers and lecturers Malcolm Le Grice, William Raban, Anna Thew, Tina Keane, Vera Neubauer, and co-students, directors and film-makers Adam Finch, Richard Heslop and Sandra Lahire, and completed his postdoctoral studies at Les entrepreneurs de l'audiovisuel européen, Brussels (1989).

[8] One of the objectives of Julien's work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting these to construct a powerfully visual narrative.

[16] In this same year, Sir Isaac Julien's films were on view at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

(Statues Never Die), a commentary on the life and work of Alain Locke, Harlem Renaissance philosopher, in dialogue with Albert C. Barnes about African art, at the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

[22] As a member of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective, Julien made The Passion of Remembrance (1986), "which attempts to deal with the difficulties of constructing a documentary history of black political experience by foregrounding questions of chauvinism and homophobia.

[24] In 2019, he was a member of the jury that selected Arthur Jafa as winner of the Prince Pierre Foundation's International Contemporary Art Prize.