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Julien Creuzet: in conversation with Folasade Ologundudu
Manage episode 473429956 series 2993789
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On this episode, I’m joined by Julien Creuzet, the Afro-descendant French Caribbean artist who has his first institutional solo exhibition on view now through June 1, 2025 at The Bell at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island.
In the episode Creuzet shares his artistic journey and passion for making exhibitions where he can have a discussion through art. His work spans various mediums including sculpture, poetry, video, music, and more. Here, he’s reimagined his French Pavillion from the 60th Venice Biennale for The Bell, focusing on water as a site of both historical and contemporary traumas and emancipatory futures. Creuzet’s artistic practice has long referenced legacies of colonialism, and his challenge to the architecture and history of the French Pavilion extends to Brown University's campus and Providence’s centrality within the Black Atlantic. He delves into the autonomy in his creative process and how identity influences his work's adaptability across different cultural and political contexts. The exhibition reflects on the colonial history of Martinique, connections between different regions, and the fluidity of human identity.
Brown is situated near the Providence River, one of the many Rhode Island ports through which the largest number of enslaved Africans entered the Thirteen Colonies prior to 1774. Triangulated with Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th century, the shipping industry of Rhode Island evolved to be deeply enmeshed with the U.S. cotton industry as the region became a center of textile production in the 19th century. Creuzet is fascinated by the watery connection between Venice, the Caribbean island of Martinique where his family has lived for generations, and Providence, conceptualizing the migration of the pavilion across a Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean dense with histories that have long informed his work. The presentation at Brown is of a different viscosity, an adaptation to Providence waterways and colonial thematics that are present on campus and loom large across the region.
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