Julien Creuzet: Orpheus was musing upon braised words, under the light rain of a blazing fog, snakes are deaf and dumb anyway, oblivion buried in the depths of insomnia

The title of the exhibition is an excerpt from a poem written by Creuzet himself, which reflects on the relationship between peripheries and centres, questioning the idea of time and geographical location as fundamental concepts for understanding cultural production. Reacting against dominant Western narratives, Creuzet seeks inspiration in the legacy of Afro-Caribbean and Creole philosophical thought and literary production. Exploring the ambiguity of representation, identity, the body, movement, and dance as tools of resistance, his intention is to create a meditation on the living spectacle of the work through visual and physical sculptural forms and time-based moving images.

By foregrounding issues of modernity, postmodernity, and contemporary cultural hybridity, the sculptural forms in the exhibition function as an intimate and powerful discovery of many worlds brought together. Images from diverse sources, including historical African sculptures, abstract landscapes, and compositions inspired by engravings and paintings, some of which refer to the work of painter Wifredo Lam, compose a path between objects and projected images, reflecting on how stories can be markers of change and resistance. The exhibition confronts the viewer with questions about the animate and the inanimate, connecting the closed space of the gallery with a wider universe of references. Avatars of dancers performing in different African traditions, including dances of the African diaspora, coupled with enigmatic poems and sounds composed by the artist, are deliberately informal yet unsettling and echo the ethics of difference, creolisation, and plurality of thought that are at the core of Creuzet’s practice.