Jean Jullien Creates an Immersive Ocean-Themed Installation for Expo 2025 France Pavilion
- Gen de Art
- May 12
- 5 min read
Updated: May 13
NANZUKA is pleased to announce the presentation of Osaka Kaiju, a new large-scale installation by French artist Jean Jullien, at the France Pavilion of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai. The exhibition will be held from Thursday, May 15 to Thursday, June 12, 2025.
This project is hosted by the Tara Ocean Foundation and introduces a sensory and intimate artistic experience created by Jean Jullien, an artist known for his deep engagement with marine environmental issues. NANZUKA is honored to collaborate on this exhibition, supporting the presentation of this major installation work.
The exhibition space is richly enhanced by a soundscape that seems to drift alongside Osaka Kaiju, created by Jean’s younger brother, Nicolas Jullien, who is also active as a sculptor, musician, and filmmaker.
In conjunction with the exhibition, agnès b. will launch a series of collaborative items including a limited-edition artist T-shirt featuring exclusive artwork created by Jean Jullien for this project, as well as stickers and postcard sets. These items will be available at select agnès b. stores.
Art as a Bridge Between Humanity and the Ocean
"As far back as I can remember, the ocean has always had a powerful impact on me," says Jean Jullien, a leading French artist. Inspired by his enduring passion for the sea, this project offers visitors a friendly, surprising, and immersive encounter with the world of ocean life.
Hosted in the France Pavilion and supported by AXA, this exhibition — themed as a hymn to love — showcases the artistic work of Jean Jullien in a space of over two hundred square meters. His creation offers a surreal encounter with Osaka Kaiju. Halfway between a ship and a sea creature, this monumental, floating, anthropomorphic figure invites visitors to dive into a little-known marine universe.
Our perception of the Ocean and its resources has been built up over the centuries around stories and myths that have fed the imaginations of communities. Jean Jullien uses his art as a mirror of the contemporary world. His illustrations are humorous visual reflections. His aim is to question the relationship between man and his environment, and our direct link with the Ocean in the face of tomorrow's environmental and societal challenges.
The artist's installation, droll characters and drawings, inspired by contemporary Japanese culture, are all tributes to a world of which we still have only a fragmentary knowledge, and which he invites us to discover in a poetic way. A hymn to the universal and vital love that links us to the Ocean. An invisible link that we cannot ignore.
Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan: An opportunity to make the Ocean a common concern
This presentation will culminate in Ocean Week, which will run in parallel with the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC 2025), held in Nice, France, from June 9 to 13.
Under the co-presidency of France and Costa Rica, UNOC 2025 aims to unite nations around concrete political solutions to the pressing global challenges facing the Ocean. As a UNOC event advisor and thru its UN Special Observer status, the Tara Ocean Foundation will play an active role during the conference, organizing a series of events and activities both leading up to and during the summit.
EXPO 2025 offers a unique platform to raise international awareness—particularly in Japan—about the importance of ocean preservation and to drive collective action. The event will also serve as an opportunity for the Tara Ocean Foundation to announce its upcoming 2026 expedition to Southeast Asia, focused on studying the resilience of coral reefs in the face of global warming.
Jean Jullien
"Osaka Kaiju"
Exhibition Period: May 15 (Thu) – June 12 (Thu), 2025
Venue: France Pavilion, Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai
Presented by: Tara Ocean Foundation & AXA Group
Supported by: NANZUKA, agnès b., and Cofrex
About Jean Jullien
Born in 1983 in France and currently based in Paris, Jean Jullien is a French artist known for his wide-ranging practice that spans illustration, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, books, clothing, and design objects. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2008 and received his MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010. Jullien has collaborated with numerous global media outlets and brands, including The New York Times, National Geographic, RCA Records, Le Centre Pompidou, Hermès, Petit Bateau, and VOGUE.
Alongside his commercial work, he has held solo exhibitions in cities around the world, such as San Francisco, London, Berlin, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, and Brussels. His work is celebrated for its unique blend of humor, warmth, and sharp insight. His visual language is shaped not only by academic art education, but also by a deep connection to diverse cultural influences. These include Japanese manga such as Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball, and City Hunter, as well as French bandes dessinées and the works of artists like Raymond Savignac, Tomi Ungerer, and Jean-Jacques Sempé. His playful, cross-disciplinary creativity moves freely between art, design, and pop culture.
In 2011, Jullien co-founded the animation duo Jullien Brothers with his brother Nicolas. In 2016, he launched the lifestyle brand NOUNOU with Jae Huh in Seoul, producing clothing, objects, rugs, and dolls with a distinctively artistic spirit.
In 2022, he published his first comprehensive monograph with Phaidon Press. His sculptural series Paper People and Paper Society have been exhibited at institutions including DDP (Seoul), MIMA (Brussels), GINZA SIX (Tokyo), and Le Bon Marché (Paris), receiving international acclaim.In 2025, Jullien is creating a special installation for the Tara Ocean Foundation at Expo 2025 Osaka.
He will also present a solo exhibition titled JUJU’S CASTLE at NANZUKA ART INSTITUTE in Shanghai in July of the same year. He is currently temporarily based in Tokyo to work on upcoming projects.
Tara Ocean Foundation
The Tara Ocean Foundation is the first public interest foundation in France dedicated to the Ocean. For over 20 years, it has been striving for a revolution to preserve Life, convinced that the Ocean is essential to the equilibrium of our planet. Exploring the Ocean and sharing scientific discoveries to raise collective awareness is at the heart of the foundation's mission. It leads scientific expeditions, in partnership with leading international research laboratories, to study marine biodiversity and understand the impacts of climate change and pollution. It raises public awareness, from the younger generation to political decision-makers. Thanks to its UN Special Observer Status, the foundation plays an active role in international Ocean governance. Exploring, sharing and protecting this living Ocean is more vital than ever. Together, let's defend Life. Let's protect the Ocean. Discover the foundation at https://fondationtaraocean.org/ and on video.
Tara Ocean Japan
Tara Ocean Japan is the Japanese sister organization of the Tara Ocean Foundation, with Étienne Bourgois as President and Yumiko Patouillet as Secretary General. It was founded at the end of 2016, just before the Tara schooner's multiple stopovers in Japan during the Tara Pacific expedition (2016-2018), and since then focuses on global marine issues through research conducted along the coastal areas of Japan, such as plastic pollution studied during the Tara JAMBIO Microplastic mission (2020 - 2023) and carbon sequestration mechanisms through marine ecosystems explored in the ongoing Tara JAMBIO Blue Carbon mission (2024 - present).
