Artist Name

Charrière Julian

Residency Program Title

KAUST-Swiss Residency Exchange

Residency Program

17

Archive

true

Institute Lab Title

Red Sea Research Center

Artistic Background

Performance, Sculpture, Photography, Film

Scientific Discipline

Marine Biology

Video

Gallery

Biography

Biography

Julian Charrière (b. 1987, Morges, Switzerland) is a French-Swiss artist based in Berlin. His work bridges the realms of environmental science and cultural history. Marshalling performance, sculpture and photography, his projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities – such as volcanoes, ice-fields and radioactive sites. 

To date, his works has explored post-romantic constructions of ‘nature’, and staged tensions between geological timescales and those relating to humankind. Charrière’s approach further reflects upon the mythos of the quest and its objects in a globalised age. Deploying seemingly perennial imagery to contemporary ends, his interventions at the borderline of mysticism and the material discus our fraught relations with place today.

Info

Project

For three months in spring 2021, Julian Charrière joined scientists of the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST. Exploring a broad range of research, Julian’s conversations with the scientists revolved around the (bio)diversity and resilience of the Red Sea coral reef and its inhabitants, the aesthetics and functionalities of underwater landscapes – natural and artificial ones – as well as concepts and processes from his practice as an artist.

A special focus was set on field trips to a number of coral reefs, as a tool for scientists and artists to study the maritime environment, for cross-disciplinary exploration and the shift of perspectives. The complexity of the coral reef ecosystem, its economic and cultural implications on coastal societies will provide ground for further and extended explorations – for the scientists as well as for Julian.

Website

http://julian-charriere.net/