Special envoys to Venice
Julien Creuzet, the Caribbean at the French pavilion
Smiling, inscrutable face, a spectacular profile under his enormous cinema top hat, Martinican Julien Creuzet, 38, nominated for the 2021 Marcel-Duchamp Prize, is the French star of this 60th Venice Biennale. As he outlined in his exhibition at the Magasin, in Grenoble, this winter, he invites us to rethink colonial history through a joyful and dancing immersive experience where the sound he designed, the color, the light are poles apart. drama (the opposite statement by John Akomfrah at the English pavilion, drama of the oceans with superb scenography). He hung his first video on the French pavilion in front of which the lines lengthen every day.
Inside, he recomposed his labyrinth of vines and marine remains, working on the material and the palette to bring to life the memories of the slaves transported like cattle from the African coasts. On the screens, aquatic images evoke the crossing and shipwrecks...