Italy – Julien Creuzet – the first French-Caribbean artist to represent France at the Venice Biennale – is showing a multi-sensory exhibition that reflects on the intercultural identities of African and Caribbean diasporas.
Born in a northeastern Paris suburb, Creuzet moved to Martinique at the age of four.
While he returned to France at the age of 20 to study at art schools in Caen, Lyon and Tourcoing, his artwork remains heavily influenced by the Caribbean island where he grew up, and his art-loving parents.
Creuzet is known for installations that combine poetry, sculpture, and film, focusing on personal history, marginalised identities, and colonial legacies.
His Venice presentation is titled "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".
It reveals the artist's penchant for long poetic titles that point to underlying themes as well as for creating sensory work that prompts the audience to question themselves.
The installation features an imaginary bridge between Martinique, France, and Venice. It includes six videos, 80 sculptures, a musical work, a catalogue in several languages and nearly 70 sound pieces by different speakers.
From France to Martinique to Italy
The international jury that chose Creuzet to headline for France said they were drawn to his “plurality of practices”.
Although Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture, inaugurated the French Pavilion in April, Creuzet had already unveiled his project in Martinique in early February.
It was the first time in the Biennale’s 60-year history that a national pavilion launched outside of Europe.
In an interview, Creuzet said this was a way to "bring together worlds that have very little chance of meeting” and to make the Biennale accessible to overseas residents.
Eva Nguyen Binh, president of the Institut Français that commissioned the exhibition, said at the Venice opening: "from Martinique to Venice, the choice is to decentre.
"Julien Creuzet brings us to open our eyes to other shores, to look at the complexity of our history and our geography.”
Leading art magazine Frieze called it one of this year's Biennale’s best exhibitions. Creuzet's Caribbean identity as an outre-mer (overseas) citizen of France was “a deafening proclamation of otherness as superpower”, it wrote.
Artsy, another notable art publication, also named the French Pavilion one of this year’s must-sees.
France at Venice
The Venice Biennale – which runs through to the end of November – is the world’s most prestigious international exhibition showcasing contemporary art.
Artists from 88 countries are shown across Venice’s Giardini, Arsenale and in the city centre, with some nations exhibiting in their own permanent onsite buildings called Pavilions.
The French Pavilion, featuring Creuzet’s work, was built in 1912.
Showing at the Venice Biennale offers invited artists unparalleled exposure.
“For me, it’s just a title. One step. One exhibition,” Creuzet told ARTnews last year. “It’s about continuing with my work, which is to share various imaginations with others. And in a sense, to question the world, our context, our history, our present. Nothing has changed.”
Around a dozen other French or France-based artists can also be found in the Biennale’s various exhibitions, including work by Chaouki Choukini and artist JR.
This year’s title "Foreigners Everywhere" also draws from a series of artworks by Claire Fontaine, an artist collective founded in Paris.
In an interview, Creuzet said the theme “will perhaps shake up the European context and the system in which we live, particularly the art world, which has always been extremely exclusionary”.
(with newswires)
