Listed below are excerpts from Anna Sansom’s article for Artnet, “How French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet makes use of Creole hymns and digital avatars to retrace African ancestry.”
On the wall of Julien Creuzet’s exhibition at Excessive Artwork in Paris is a 1976 newspaper article about “the one voodoo temple in Europe.” Revealed in Le Monde, the story describes a dinner at a time the place white Parisians had been served by Black “girls and boys” earlier than collaborating in a frenetic, drum-beating voodoo ceremony. The occasion befell within the Pigalle district, the place Excessive Artwork is coincidentally situated.
This text, with its condescending tone of exoticism, is one among two references factors in Creuzet’s exhibition title, “The Possessed of Pigalle or the Tragedy of King Christophe.” The second is a satirical 1963 play by Aimé Césaire, the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician, which focuses on a Haitian hero who’s topped king following the nation’s independence from France in 1804. In his quest to mimic the ruling type of a European monarch, he turns into despotic and, confronted with an rebellion, takes his personal life.
By way of these disparate factors, the 36-year-old Creuzet, who was lately named to characterize France on the Venice Biennale in 2024, has mirrored upon the the painful colonial historical past, panorama, and tradition of the Caribbean, from Haiti to Creuzet’s homeland, Martinique, one among France’s 12 abroad territories. The big solo exhibition (operating till April 8) is nuanced and multilayered, and as brightly coloured and exuberant as it’s poignant and disquieting. [. . .]
In his Paris present, Creuzet has been open-hearted. Within the first of the 4 rooms, Creole singing and pulsating rhythms emanate from a turntable and huge black heads which can be festooned with fragments of raffia baggage. Close by, two conjoined types of concentric circles common from plastic, threads, and beads allude to clouds being bombed with silver iodide molecules to summon the rain throughout a drought. Within the adjoining rooms, suspended sculptures stuffed with grains, rice, and beans recall choices to Demeter—the Greek goddess of the harvest, whereas amorphous sculptures with trailing threads evoke the detritus, air pollution and seaweed of fishing villages and fishing nets. Roosters, that are emblematic of France, have settled on, or turn out to be trapped in, one among these intricately-made items.
A number of the sculptures on view gestated in Creuzet’s studio in Montreuil, a commune east of Paris, for 3 or 4 years earlier than coming into being. “It’s as if the studio had been a spot of experimentation [and some pieces] want time to seek out their decision,” Creuzet stated. “In the future, all of the sudden there are components that tackle all their that means and find yourself organizing themselves and writing issues. There’s a second when the sculpture escapes me and I nearly not have the impression of getting been its writer. That is the second when the sculpture is completed and turns into a piece for me.”
To Martinique, and Again Once more
Born in 1986 in Le Blanc Mesnil, a suburb north-east of Paris, Creuzet moved to Martinique along with his mother and father on the age of 4. His father, an assistant nurse, beloved artwork and took the artist and his youthful brother to see exhibitions and cultural occasions happening on the island. On the age of 20, Creuzet returned to France to check artwork. An epiphany was visiting Documenta 13, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in 2012, that includes works by, amongst others, Ryan Gander, Anri Sala, and Pierre Huyghe. “I found the curatorial fantastic thing about an exhibition and it made me need to do my job,” he reminisced.
Over the past decade, Creuzet has developed a transdisciplinary apply that encompasses poetry, efficiency, singing, and composing in addition to visible artwork. An early begin was his exhibition “Opéra-archipel” at Frac Basse Normandie in 2015, named in homage to the Martinican poet Édouard Glissant; within the present, Creuzet explored how the ocean hyperlinks the archipelago of Caribbean islands.
A huge break got here in 2021, when he was nominated for the celebrated Prix Marcel Duchamp. For the present, he introduced a sweeping set up on the Centre Pompidou that mirrored upon slavery whereas interweaving vibrancy and poetry. Then final December, Creuzet received the primary version of the Étant Donnés Prize awarded by CPGA (French Skilled Committee of Artwork Galleries) and Villa Albertine to a dwelling artist energetic in France and exhibiting at Artwork Basel Miami Seaside. Creuzet’s work was on show at Excessive Artwork and Andrew Kreps Gallery from New York. Concurrently with the present at Excessive Artwork, Creuzet has an exhibition view at Luma Westbau in Zurich (operating till Could 21). He may also participated within the Liverpool Biennial, opening in June.
“His attachment to poetry leads him to intertwine tales and navigate in time and house,” stated Bernard Blistène, who was director of the Centre Pompidou when Creuzet was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. “Colonial historical past is […] underground, unforgivable, and unforgiven, main Creuzet to mix politics and poetry by means of tales from the previous and tales to be written.”
Creuzet flew again to Martinique for the primary time in a decade that very same yr. Seeing how a lot it had modified and realizing how out-of-step he felt linguistically was “like a shock,” he stated. “I understood that I ought to go dwelling extra typically, as a result of that’s the place my feelings, creativeness, and household come from,” he famous.
For his exhibition at Excessive Artwork, Creuzet has returned to his contemplation of the ocean with regard to the displacement and migration of the African diaspora. In his hybridized painting-sculptures, the cruciforms of the chassis have been eliminated and changed with vegetal types, that includes barely perceptible, vague figures amongst swirling aquatic shapes, threads, and beads. Creuzet likens the figures to extras in a movie—unknowable, background characters who’re nonetheless essential to a scene.
“From a distance, I handle to determine or challenge myself into the tales or lack of them [of the figures],” Creuzet stated. “After I say ‘lack’, I’m pondering of this unresolved quest of an Afro-descendant who can’t hint his household tree. It’s as if my forefather had been the ocean, mon arrière-arrière-arrière-la-mer, mon arrière-arrière-arrière-océan,” he stated mournfully. The poetic phrases translate to “my nice, nice, nice sea, my nice, nice, nice ocean,” in reference to ancestry.
It was maybe fascinated by a determine who traverses time and house that impressed Creuzet’s avatar-like character that reappears and evolves in his exhibitions. At Camden Artwork Centre in 2022, the place Creuzet had a present after successful its Rising Artist Prize throughout Frieze London, it additionally appeared. Martin Clark, director of Camden Artwork Centre, famous that the character was “pulling books from their head that fashioned a bibliography of diaspora, African, and Caribbean writers which had knowledgeable Julien’s pondering” in a single video work and “dancing a really explicit Caribbean dance of protest, independence and resistance” in one other.
At Excessive Artwork, this as-yet-unnamed character, which has grown protrusions of feathers on the suggestions of their palms, seems in a wallpaper piece and an animated video work. Within the latter, the determine performs the bèlè dance, which developed in Martinique throughout slavery, in opposition to a altering, blue-hued backdrop interspersed with bountiful flowers and man-made components. It’s accompanied by Creuzet singing in Creole. [. . ]
For full article, see https://information.artnet.com/art-world/french-caribbean-artist-julien-creuzet-on-using-creole-hymns-and-digital-avatars-to-retrace-african-ancestry-2264612
[First photo: Installation view of Julien Creuzet’s “The Possessed of Pigalle or the Tragedy of King Christophe” at High Art, Paris. Second: Photo of the artist by Virginie Ribaut.]