Julien Creuzet

Born in 1986, Julien Creuzet is a French-Caribbean artist who lives and works in Paris. A visual artist and poet, he actively intertwines these two practices via amalgams of sculpture, installation and textual intervention that frequently address his own diasporic experience. Inspired by the poetic and philosophical reflections of Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant on creolization and migration, Creuzet’s work focuses on the troubled intersection of the history of Martinique and the events of European modernity.

Creuzet has had solo exhibitions at LUMA, Arles, France (2022); the Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2021); Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2019); CAN Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland (2019); Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris, France (2018); and Bétonsalon, Paris, France (2018).

He has participated in numerous institutional group exhibitions including the 35th São Paulo Bienal (forthcoming – 2023), São Paulo, Brazil; the 12th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2023), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2022-2023); the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2022); Musée Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2022); the National Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic, (2022); Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Middletown, CT (2021); Manifesta 13, Marseille, France (2020); Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France (2020); Kampala Biennale, Kampala, Uganda (2018); and Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2018).

He is included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Fondation Villa Datris, Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes and Kadist Foundation, among others.

Creuzet is the recipient of the 2022 Etants Donnés Prize, the 2021 BMW Art Journey Award and the 2019 Camden Arts Centre Emerging Artist Prize at Frieze.

Works

Installation view of "flapping feathers our hands our wings glimmer to dance the orange sky" at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 2022

Installation view of "Orpheus was musing upon braised words..." at LUMA Arles, 2022

Installation view of "MOVE: Intimacy as Resistance" at the National Gallery Prague, in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, 2022

Installation view of "Too blue, too deep, too dark we sank..." at the Camden Art Centre, 2022

Installation view of "Backup, Blackness ou Négritude, bleu, vert, orange, je suis fatigué, A female Negro Slave, with a weight chaine to her Ancle, Blackness ou Négritude..." at the The Centre Pompidou, 2021

Julien Creuzet
Installation view of "Backup, Blackness ou Négritude, bleu, vert, orange, je suis fatigué, A female Negro Slave, with a weight chaine to her Ancle, Blackness ou Négritude..." at the The Centre Pompidou, 2021

Installation view of "it's a sad day in Morne à l'eau volcano body volcano tumor mood blood pool fucking sweet half moon damn black rotten banana", installed at Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, 2021

Installation view of "cloud cloudy glory doodles on the leaves pages, memory slowly the story redness sadness bloody redness on the skin" at DOCUMENT, 2020

Installation view of "Allied Chemical & Dye" at High Art, 2019

Installation view of "dim lights of distant stars LEDs of warning lights indulge, lamp post embers that burn wings, mad sacrifice of the light butterfly, twilight phantom from before the birth of the world (...)

it's the uncanny, I must have been gone too long that place far away, home is in my black-dreams it's the uncanny, strangled words while drowning, I howled alone underwater, my fever (...)” at Palais de Tokyo, 2019

Julien Creuzet,
Distant, the oral songs of youth buried..., 2020
metal, plastic, pineapple

Julien Creuzet, Our eyes have seen the underside of the seas,...(Ojo de Horus, violeta), 2022, Plastic, metal, fabric, 72 x 60 x 8 in

Julien Creuzet, Our eyes have seen the underside of the seas,...(Ojo de Horus, verde), 2022, Plastic, metal, fabric, 48 x 36 x 8 in

Julien Creuzet
Subjective heritage, there are unknown parts in us that isolate us a little more every day. We dream about it, so many phantasmagorical, digital illusions, we just have to list our nightmares: Shell - Red-bellied Orthodox Wing from Trinidad and Tobago - Machete - Cocaine - RNA Messenger - Head of a red-bellied ortalid from Trinidad - English Lion - Sugar cane, 2021
Metal, plastic, fabric

Julien Creuzet
Subjective heritage, there are unknown parts in us that isolate us a little more every day. We dream about it, so many phantasmagorical, digital illusions, we just have to list our nightmares: Royal horse of the statue in the Louvre - Sugar cane plant - Head of ibis from Trinidad and Tobago - Bird of paradise feather - English Caravel - Trinidad ibis leg - Pelican head of the West Indian Federation coat of arms (...), 2021
Metal, plastic, fabric

Julien Creuzet
Herbs, mad or weeds watered by sweat..., 2020
metal, plastic, fabric

Julien Creuzet
The rain made it possible, in the wake of the angry Morne, the mountain has been silent. Impacts of war, of missile drops. After all this, perhaps the volcano will protest in turn. - All the sea’s distance (...), 2018
Wood, plastic, paper, hibiscus pigment, clothes

Julien Creuzet
pitching, setback, throwing
we are particles of nothing, heart hollowed out, pitched, the time that life goes on, 2019
metal, plastic, fabric

Julien Creuzet
Oswald DE ANDRADE, « Manifesto Antropófago », A utopia antropofágica, São Paulo, Editora Globo, 1990, p. 47-52...Derek WALCOTT, Omeros, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991, 2021
Looped video animation, in collaboration with Estelle Coppolani

Julien Creuzet
Fear, in front of the siren, In front of my shadow In his heat Intense, 2019
Engraving and paper on laminated plywood

Julien Creuzet
Installation view of the exhibition "The Possessed of Pigalle or the Tragedy of King Christophe" at High Art Paris, 2023⁠