wiry sculptures and intricate threads unravel across the venice art biennale’s french pavilion

julien creuzet animates the french pavilion at the venice biennale

Julien Creuzet transforms the French Pavilion into a multisensory immersion animated with vibrant spools of thread, suspended contortions, dynamic screens, and floral aromas. At the 60th Venice Art Biennale, the installation is a manifestation of the artist’s reflections of his Caribbean roots and upbringing in France, as well as a reference to oceanic voyages and cultural syncretism — a complex narrative fittingly responsive to this year’s theme, Foreigner’s Everywhere. With curation by Céline Kopp and Cindy Sissokho, its title is equally contemplative and poetic: Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green pitons will end in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tears tides of the moon.

a nautical journey spanning sculpture, sound, and scent

Julien Creuzet’s assemblage is spiritual, contemplative, and laden with socio-political questionings of migration, otherness, and marginality. Enveloping the French Pavilion’s facade and inviting visitors in is a vast screen rendering ambiguous beings and hypnotic gestures. Within, tapestries and wiry sculptures adorned with vibrant threads intertwine and hang from the ceiling. Bronze-cast vessels are filled with pools of water exuding hints of aroma throughout the space, nodding to the overarching nautical theme of the intervention.

Through digital media, sound, sculpture, poetic collages, and an olfactory dimension, the French-Caribbean artist instigates a dialogue between the founding imaginaries and myths of our hybrid societies. In the work, water, the seas, and oceans are conduits of his vision of history, of the movements of people, ideas, and forms. The references that Creuzet draws from different geographies, around the Caribbean, Latin America, and West Africa, find their echoes on the European continent and in Venice. Building bridges between apparently distinctive cultures, his organic perspective identifies the deep wellsprings of our humanity.

The French Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale is organized by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Culture, Institut français, and supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund and the LUMA Foundation.

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project info:

name: Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green pitons will end in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tears tides of the moon

artist: Julien Creuzet

program: Venice Art Biennale 2024

location: French Pavilion, Giardini, Venice