[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] The full title of this article is “Julien Creuzet on water as a repository of collective memory and place of reconnection.” Elisa Carollo (Observer) on Martinican artists Julien Creuzet: “In Venice, the artist has created an immersive multisensory installation exploring the myths of hybrid societies.” Here are excerpts; read full review at Observer.
Originally from Martinique, Julien Creuzet brought his distinctive French-Caribbean voice to the French Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale where he reflects on the sea as both a horizon of opportunity and a threat, a place of healing and life as well as death and suffering. In Venice, Creuzet envisioned a pavilion where ‘overseas territories’ and the ‘ultramarine’ merge into a fluid dimension, evoking our embryonic origins in water and humanity’s dependence on this vital element. His work, titled Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer gouffre bleu nous nous noyâmes dans les larmes marées de la lune (or “Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon”) reads like a poem that connects ancient mythologies and suggests a continuous flow of narratives and spiritualities born from intercultural exchange.
“We need to consider which is the first and oldest memory a child has, as an embryo, before birth,” Creuzet told Observer. “This is an immersive experience inside the liquid—the liquid of maternity and life. Sometimes, when we take a bath and go to the beach, more or less unconsciously, we can feel again and retrieve memories about that, especially when our body is floating inside the water.”
Building on this concept, Creuzet has created an immersive multimedia and multisensory installation that blends sound, video and sculpture to explore the myths of hybrid societies. Sculptural threads hang from the ceiling, rich in texture and pigment, unraveling across the space like an intricate forest of lianas or a coral cluster. These threads capture relics of human civilization entangled in the currents of nature and history. In crafting this sensory confluence of narratives and sensations, Creuzet has forged a radical imaginary that invites connection to the divine, ancestral and, simultaneously, to Venice, with its canals and maritime legacy.
In Creuzet’s work, water—particularly as it manifests in seas and oceans—serves as a vehicle for the continuous flow of history, the movement of people, energies and ideas shaping new forms. The mysterious narrative he weaves within the space embraces water as a repository of collective memories and traumas but also as a realm of initiation, healing and regeneration. [. . . ]
For full article, see https://observer.com/2024/09/artist-interview-julien-creuzet-venice-biennale
[Shown above, photo by Djiby Kebe for CHANEL Culture Fund: Martinique-born Julien Creuzet represented France at this year’s Venice Biennale, transforming the pavilion into a space where a radical and collective imaginary opens up.]