Julien Creuzet: 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 was initiated in 2020 as a co-commissioned exhibition for the French Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The project was organized by Céline Kopp and Cindy Sissokho and reimagined for US-based venues by Kate Kraczon at the David Winton Bell Gallery of the Brown Arts Institute and Amber Esseiva at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU). 

Julien Creuzet, 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, Sea turtle, 2024. HD video, color, silent. Installation view in the 60th Venice Biennale at the French Pavilion, Venice, Italy, April 20–November 11, 2024. Courtesy Institute français. © Julien Creuzet

French and Martinican artist Julien Creuzet (b.1986, Le Blanc-Mesnil, France), works across moving image, dance, poetry, and sound, with a sculptural materiality both organic and inorganic. Fascinated by the watery connections between Venice, Martinique, and the Atlantic coast of the US—where Providence’s Brown University and Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University are both located—this multi-sited, migrating pavilion crosses an ocean marked by histories that have long informed his work. 

At the ICA, Creuzet will adapt the suspended projection screens first developed for the Bell’s iteration of the project. This presentation will feature fewer artworks, encouraging deeper engagement and critical interpretation. 

Julien Creuzet, Distant, the oral songs of youth buried, in the DNA of the bones, a little remnant, a little pain, we remember when walking slowly in the field of old ravaging reeds. the smell is imprinted in the most ancestral dreams, 2020. Metal, plastic, and pineapple. Courtesy DOCUMENT, Chicago. © Julien Creuzet

Themes of identity, memory, and colonial legacies are particularly relevant to the VCU community and its historical context, and Creuzet’s project aligns with the ICA’s ongoing focus on the Black American experience, expanding it through insights from African, Caribbean, and European narratives. Public programs featuring local scholars, artists, and activists will complement the exhibition, fostering dialogues around the artworks and their implications. Collaborations with the VCU sculpture department will create opportunities for hands-on engagement and learning.

Amber Esseiva is Acting Senior Curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA VCU). Since joining ICA VCU in 2016, she has championed emerging artists, created platforms for compelling new voices, and connected local and global art communities. She has worked with rising talents such as Kandis Williams, Tomashi Jackson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Martine Syms, Xaviera Simmons, and Dineo Seshee Bopape, among others. Esseiva has also curated major group exhibitions engaging critical issues of national and international impact, including Dear Mazie (2024) and Great Force (2019). Prior to joining ICA VCU, she held positions in other cultural institutions and commercial galleries. Esseiva was appointed the first Curator-at-Large at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2022 while continuing her curatorial role at ICA VCU. 

Kate Kraczon is Director of Exhibitions of the Brown Arts Institute (BAI) and Chief Curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University. She oversees BAI’s exhibition programs at the Bell, including its collection of over seven thousand works in List Art Center, the Cohen Gallery in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, and Brown’s public art collection. Kraczon has organized exhibitions of the work of Elisabeth Subrin, Savannah Knoop, Jules Gimbrone, Harry Gould Harvey IV, and Faith Wilding. From 2008 to 2019, Kraczon was the Andrea B. Laporte Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (ICA Philadelphia) where she organized more than thirty exhibitions. Her exhibition Ree Morton: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison (2018) received the Sotheby’s Prize in 2017. 

Céline Kopp is Director of Le Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain (Grenoble). From 2012 to 2022, she was Director of the thirty-year-old nonprofit visual arts organization Triangle-Astérides (Marseille), where she developed exhibition projects with Liz Magor, the Chicano artist group Asco, Paul Maheke, Jesse Darling, and Lydia Ourahmane, among others. Kopp was Curator of the 6th Ateliers de Rennes—Contemporary Art Biennial: À Cris Ouverts (2018) and the Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She has conceived numerous projects in France and abroad, notably with the Powerhouse (Memphis) and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen). Since 2020, Kopp has been on the board of the French association for the development of centres d’art (d.c.a), where she promotes her vision of the art institution as a site for the assertion of cultural rights through artist-centered, audience-responsive, and site-specific work. 

Cindy Sissokho is a curator, cultural producer, art consultant, and writer who specializes in anti-colonial, social, and political practices within the arts and culture. Her writing and curatorial work are driven by the urgency to broaden and disseminate knowledge and artistic production from systemically racialized and marginalized perspectives. Sissokho curated the major exhibition Hard Graft: Work, Health & Rights (2024–ongoing), which opened at the Wellcome Collection (London). She previously served as a curator at the New Art Exchange (Nottingham) and worked in Exhibitions and Public Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary.

Anthony Huberman, Eli Coplan, Giorno Poetry Systems