Julien Creuzet: La pluie a rendu cela possible depuis le morne en colère, la montagne est restée silencieuse. Des impacts de la guerre, des gouttes missile. Après tout cela, peut-être que le volcan protestera à son tour. – Toute la distance de la mer (…)

La pluie a rendu cela pos­sible depuis le morne en colère, la mon­tagne est restée silen­cieuse. Des impacts de la guerre, des gouttes mis­sile. Après tout cela, peut-être que le volcan protestera à son tour. – Toute la dis­tance de la mer (…)

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 (...)

From January 24 to April 14, 2018
Opening on Tuesday, January 23 – 6 to 9 p.m.

Curated by Mélanie Bouteloup

Fondation d’entreprise Ricard and Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research are happy to pre­sent jointly a double solo exhi­bi­tion by Julien Creuzet (b. 1986, Le Blanc-Mesnil, France).

In this pro­ject, Julien Creuzet com­ments on and finds shapes for sto­ries of dis­place­ment, exile, accul­tur­a­tion and reap­pro­pri­a­tion of iden­ti­ties. His works com­bine everyday ele­ments and wooden forms with poetry, songs and music. They inhabit places within both insti­tu­tions and dia­logue between them. In one, the artist con­structs radiant inhab­ited forests, offering a counter-bal­ance to a cen­tral­izing mod­ernism which the will of uni­ver­salism has ren­dered blind to the diver­sity of lived expe­ri­ences. In the other, sus­pended wooden forms seem to hold their breath.

Creuzet places the link between iden­ti­ties and economies at the heart of his instal­la­tions. He looks at the transat­lantic tra­jec­to­ries of the Caribbean dias­pora or of the migrants of the global South, sub­jects of a racial divi­sion of labor that remains hidden and is yet reflected in all spheres of our life, whether pri­vate or public.

By com­posing mul­ti­linear land­scapes made up of hetero­ge­neous ele­ments, enlacing hur­ri­canes of the Caribbean, the cov­ered mar­kets of Montreuil and Portuguese man o’ war, Creuzet echoes the con­cerns of the philoso­pher Achille Mbembe who in his essay Politiques de l’inim­itié (La Découverte, 2016) asks: "How can we, in our divided world, con­tribute to the emer­gence of a thought that is capable of con­tributing to the con­sol­i­da­tion of a demo­cratic pol­i­tics on a global level, a thought of com­ple­men­tar­i­ties rather than dif­fer­ence?" By thinking about the emo­tions and par­tic­ular expe­ri­ences of the world, he cre­ates a space that is – both socially and for­mally – inhab­ited and where mar­gins and cen­ters are chal­lenged.

At the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, the exhi­bi­tion will end on Monday, February 19th with a day of per­for­mances. With the closing of the show, all the works will be gath­ered at Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research to form a last, all-encom­passing ensemble.
The exhi­bi­tions will be accom­pa­nied by a free pub­li­ca­tion shared by both insti­tu­tions.

Exhibition at Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Toute la dis­tance de la mer, pour que les fil­a­ments à huile des mance­nil­liers nous arrê­tent les bat­te­ments de cœur. - La pluie a rendu cela pos­sible (…), from January 23 to February 19, 2018.
Opening on Monday, January 22, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.