Julien Creuzet: Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer

Artist: Julien Creuzet. Curators: Céline Kopp and Cindy Sissokho. Commissioner: Institut français.

“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.”

These words create sounds—they exist through an assertive presence of poetry and hold a world of possibilities. This text is a refusal for us to give away interpretative freedom. It claims the right to be, to make space for deep feelings: “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.”

The sight of the matoutou falaise is a gift when it appears in dense forests, on the bark of the Zamana trees or the rocks of the Martinique shores. It requires a deep connection to the environment; an eye that sweeps the contours and glides over the textures. It is about appearances and disappearances, what is given, protected, and also unseen…This way of seeing is undoubtedly what Julien Creuzet strives to offer through the experience of his work. It describes an immersion in a poetry of forms and sounds, volumes and lines in movement, colorful encounters forming new languages: an experience to be lived deeply. This tarantula, endemic to Martinique, could well be the symbol of a way of being with art that history has yet to write. It nourishes, and protects, in the teaching of a sensible and poetic understanding of the world it offers a softer gaze to approach the many ecologies of life. Creuzet’s forms stem from a locus of emancipation, which must be felt to truly see. It is a moment of learning and unlearning as a reconciliation with our senses, as well as a space to be untranslated and liberated.

A catalogue by Julien Creuzet: The catalogue will include a series of previously unpublished works by Julien Creuzet and extracts from literary texts (poems, fiction, science fiction, critical essays, a film script) that reveal common imaginaries that are shared among the African diasporas and linked with his work. Julien Creuzet invited five researchers to propose titles that have populated both their imaginations and his own work. They are the academic Ari Lima, the researcher and academic Noémi Michel, the researcher and archivist Mukashyaka Nsengimana, the visual artist Sofía Bonilla Otoya, and the writer and academic Maboula Soumahoro. Their voices and collaboration played a fundamental role in bringing together the sea-related stories and imaginaries that make up this book. Some of the texts selected in their original language have never been translated into English, let alone French, such as the work of the Afro-Brazilian writer and activist Beatriz Nascimento (1942–95) or the Cuban writer Excilia Saldaña (1946–99), to name but two.

It is published by Beaux-Arts de Paris editions in partnership with Institut français. 

Julien Creuzet’s book is one facet of the twin dimensions of the catalogue, which also takes oral form as a sonic reader including over 70 sound pieces, which accompany and give new life to the catalogue’s texts. They were generously read in four languages (French, English, Spanish and Portuguese) by the project’s collaborators (Ana Pi, Sofía Salazar Rosales, Cindy Sissokho and Maboula Soumahoro), alongside a series of interviews between the artist, the curators and other guests, on the themes of the artistic project. 

Supporters: With the exceptionnal support of the CHANEL Culture Fund and the support of the LUMA Foundation.

Press contacts: Pierre Laporte Communication, frenchpavilion [​at​] pierre-laporte.com, T (+33) 1 45 23 14 14