The selection committee, which includes the director of the Center Pompidou-Metz Chiara Parisi, the director of HKW, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Katerina Gregos and Guillaume Désanges, President of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, unanimously chose Julien Creuzet: “for his work, where poetry infuses a multiplicity of practices with strength and generosity: sculpture, text, video, music, performance, even new technologies. These different elements are used to construct immersive and multisensory worlds animated by whispering memories […]”.

Julien Creuzet is a French-Caribbean artist who lives and works in Montreuil. He spent most of his childhood in Martinique. His early years in the Caribbean, at the crossroads of African, Indian and European cultures, left their mark on a body of work in which the fusion of imaginary worlds plays a central role. He studied at the École Supérieure d’Arts & Médias de Caen/Cherbourg and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, and graduated from Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in 2013. He teaches at the Beaux-Arts de 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 will propose a totally new project for the French Pavilion. It will be supported by the Institut français, which will operate the pavilion on behalf of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture. A young talent from the French contemporary creative scene, Julien Creuzet is also the winner of this year’s Étant Donnés Prize, awarded by the Villa Albertine and the French Professional Committee of Art Galleries. He recently won the $20,000 Étant Donnés Prize, which is given to a French artist exhibiting at Art Basel Miami Beach. In 2021 Creuzet was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s top art award.