Midnight Zone

Playa Boca del Tule, Baja California Sur, Mexico - Nov 15 – Dec 1, 2024

Museo de Historia Natual y Cultura Ambiental - Feb 4 – Mar 9, 2025

Museum Tinguely, Basel - Jun 11 – Nov 2, 2025

Midnight Zone started with the fabrication of a custom-designed underwater lighthouse lens, engineered to withstand depths of up to 2,000 meters. The lens was first exhibited at the Noor Festival 2023 in Riyadh which was curated by Jerome Sans, Alaa Tarabzouni, Fahad Bin Naif and myself. Soon after, in 2024 Julian launched a marine expedition in which he traveled hundreds of miles off the coast of Mexico, where he submerged the lens deep into the Pacific Ocean and filmed marine life interacting with the slowly turning light.

Julian was inspired by the environmental threats of deep-sea mining and its impact on marine ecosystems. The work is the result of an extensive investigation into the geological history of the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, supported by field expeditions to the region.

Lighthouses have traditionally served as warnings, their spinning beacons guiding seafarers away from danger. In Midnight Zone, Charrière subverts this function, encasing a lighthouse lens in a waterproof cylinder and lowering it into the ocean, where it interacts with marine life—including tuna, vast schools of fish, and sharks. Rather than repelling danger, the light reveals it, illuminating the contested waters surrounding Clarion and Clipperton Islands, near Mexico’s largest marine sanctuary, the Revillagigedo National Park.

Beneath these waters, the seabed is scattered with polymetallic nodules—potato-sized formations rich in cobalt and manganese, materials deemed critical for the so-called “green revolution.” However, this is not a barren terrain; it is the foundation of a thriving deep-sea ecosystem, home to a myriad of species. Recent discoveries suggest that these nodules may even generate an electric charge responsible for oxygen production in the deep sea, raising the possibility that this region played a fundamental role in the origins of life on Earth.

Through the hypnotic interplay of the spinning lantern and the marine life it attracts, Midnight Zone forges an emotional connection to these fragile ecosystems—vast, unexplored, and increasingly threatened by human intervention. By taking viewers on a journey through the water column, Charrière raises a critical question, “Is deep-sea mining worth the environmental cost of extraction?”

The film was first shown alongside the lens on an enormous inflatable screen in Playa Boca del Tule, a public beach in Los Cabos, Mexico. The outdoor presentation allowed anyone to drive up, sit on the sand and enjoy the mesmerizing film. The public was immersed into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The screen functioned as a window which allowed the viewer to see the lens illuminating an underwater realm rarely seen by human eyes.

The film will also be on shown at Museo de Historia Natural y Cultura Ambiental in Mexico City from February 4 to March 9, 2025, as well as part of Julian Charrière’s solo exhibition Midnight Zone, opening June 2025 at Museum Tinguely, following which it will travel to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, opening March 2026. I hope you have a chance to see it.

Curator: Pedro Alonzo

Curatorial Assistant: Inés Maldonado Cabañas

IG @julian.charriere / julian-charriere.net

Images: Julian Charrière, Midnight Zone, 2024, Installation View, Baja California Sur. Copyright the artist; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany. Photos by Adil Schindler