In a 2022 interview with Cédric Fauq, Julian Creuzet, who works with sculpture, video, and music/sound, argues that he often prefers an iconoclastic approach that eschews an emphasis on technique and materials in favour of an appreciation for the whole, especially its potential for articulating depth. Though sculpture is central to Creuzet’s practice, he is invested in a persistent questioning of form and a sensory engagement with his work; for instance, the use of smell as that which is closely tied to memory, or music, which can draw in new audiences to visual art spaces. Often ascribed to natural or organic forms, namely those of with aquatic features, Creuzet’s hallmark sculptural creations are, by his own account, influenced by urban, inner-city environments. Creuzet’s conceptual approach finds a new iteration—far removed from the aforementioned approaches—in these newly commissioned works, which grapple with the legacy of Lourenço da Silva Mendonça beyond the universalist abolitionism that sometimes obscures the agency of enslaved and racialized people. Mendonça was one of the first people to publicly advance abolitionist ideas in Europe. In 1684, after years of exile and fact-finding travel through Brazil, Portugal, and Spain, he launched a criminal case against European nations involved in the trade of enslaved people, which is believed to have directly led to Pope Innocent XI condemning slavery on 20 March 1686.

Sculpture works commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), produced by Julien Creuzet, 2025

Works in the exhibition: head gently placed against head, we were two, we, together foam sweat on the branches, we were so much more, you think we were Moors, we were air sigh in the lair of your crowned heads, sigh, let us float (...) (2025), sculpture: laser cut steel, cardboard, plastic , textile threads, electrical and aluminium wires, wood, acrylic paint, 269 × 151 × 70 cm; can we escape, elsewhere, through the door of sequestrations, can we let the gaze observe the distance, when where we are will never exist again. wandering, on the ocean horizon. My body before his body, his body before his body, his body well before his body, like a great madness of tears (…) (2025), sculpture: steel, coffee, plastic bottle, condom, tissue, electric wire, plastic, textile threads, cardboard, 230 × 206.5 × 40 cm; They broke (…) to soften my body (2021), video, colour HD with sound, 21 12".  Courtesy of Julien Creuzet & Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; DOCUMENT, Chicago, Lisbon; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York