Artist
Celine Croze
Celine Croze is a visual artist born in Morocco and based in Paris with a background in cinema.
Sensitive to the cracks that our society is going through, her work focus on social issues and human bodies as territories. Celine uses film codes to transgress the world she’s looking at.
Her various works as a photographer and video artist were presented at the Billboard Festival in Casablanca (2015), the Marrakech Biennale in 2016, the Paraguay Biennale (El ojo Salvaje - 2018), the Tangier Photography Foundation (2019), the Dummy Award Photobook of Kassel and the Fuam Dummy Book Award from Istanbul in 2018.
In 2019, she is the winner of the In Cadaqués Festival with « SQEVNV », and the Revelation Price between Festival Map and Face à la mer.
In 2020, she is selected among 100 emerging European photographers by Gup magazine and Fresh Eyes Photo Talent 2020 (book published in July 2020) and she’s the winner of the Prix Mentor 2020 with « Mala Madre ».
In 2021, she’s one of the finalist of the HSBC prize 2021 with « SQEVNV » and will exhibited it in April at the Festival Instantes in Portugal.
Her work 'Nothing Hapenned' will be exposed in April 2021 at the Rencontres de la jeune photographie internationale de Niort (Villa Perochon). She’s also have been selected by Claudio Composti for the Leica Oscar Barnack, and she’s one of the laureate of the Tremplin Jeunes Talents of the Festival Planches Contact in Deauville 2021.
SQEVNV
« Siempre que estemos vivos nos veremos »
« As long as we are alive we will meet again »
Those are the last words Yaïr told me.
We were on the rooftops of the block 11, the fog was all over Caracas, the crazy murmur of the city looked like a mournful chant.
A bullet in my heart. The consciousness he had of his own ending had a terrible and sublime something. All was said. The emergency of life, the fascination of death, the downfall of the country. The extreme violence and the absurdity of the situation gave the impression that life was nothing but a game.
Two days earlier, I recalled of this place called la gallina.
The smell of blood mixed with rhum and sweat, the shouts of rage, the excitement within each and every men. An intangible transe intoxicated the arena as we were all out of control. As if power and blood gave us life again.
The chaotic energy of the city resonated in each fight like a dance unfold, sustainable, helplessly crying.
A month later, Yaïr was shot. He was 27.
In Caracas, I plunged into an ocean of death and ultimate life. The violence of the stories that were told to me, the eminent danger, plunged me in a frightful helplessness. Like these fighting cocks, I saw people dancing and clinging to an unavoidable situation. The analogy was limpid.
It is through an installation mixing photography, video and sound creation that I wish transcribe the suffocation and confinement state of the country.
The use of these three different mediums will allow me to recreate the chaotic atmosphere of Caracas and to give the spectators an immersion in echoing spheres. Built as lifts, each part of the installation will be needed to each other in order to set up the metaphor of fighting with the destiny of these men.
By nominating Romain Bagnard, Céline Croze, Julie Glassberg and Eleni Onasoglu for Futures talents 2021, TPF unveils the group of emerging European photographers and their works with a strong visual identity that result from the capacities to develop long-term personal projects throughout deep researches to define an individual photographic writing, to build a coherence between the content and the shape the photo project is supposed to take in its final version.
Between Celine Croze ’s SQEVNV that focuses on social issues and human bodies as territories; Julie Glassberg’s Dekotora - a saga of misunderstood subculture of heavily decorated trucks in Japan; Aphros by Roman Bagnard who brings to surface the opaque signs of a primitive ephemeral urban alphabet and Eleni Onasoglu’s Hippocampus – a visual diary, a coded memory map that leads to an inner journey to explore the time and the emotions – TPF gives to discover 4 artists with very different photographic writings who re-invent their individual visual codes, overcome their vulnerability and transgress the reality they look at into the images that attract by their multilayerness of meanings and sensuality.
Text by Nestan Nijaradze