It all begins outside the exhibition with the eponymous statement ALL MY HOPES BELONG TO YOU displayed in sober characters on the facade of Transfo, directly aimed at the public. A foreword to the exhibition, the inscription takes the form of an open declaration, a manifesto for a world in which affects, hopes and relationships are shared and passed on. This opening message immediately places the exhibition in a context of mutuality and association, inviting passers-by to enter and continue the experience inside. 

At the entrance, an ample hanging of black silk paper – the artist’s signature material – embraces the visitor and guides them through the building with its sporadic, recurrent presence. The silk paper has reappeared on multiple occasions in the work of Joël Andrianomearisoa, who confirms his interest in the material: silk paper is “extremely fragile and, once combined, highly resilient. In itself, the paper is nothing at all. It’s a paper we generally use for wrapping. It makes no assertions. Yet when it enfolds, it transforms, providing a different appearance, a different structure, a different view of things”. Indeed, the artist created a monumental installation using this black paper for the Madagascar pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Aside from valuing its elegant texture and mobility of flow, Joël Andrianomearisoa sees the material as a receptacle for time and memory, able to retain the imprint of breaths, actions and pleats, which alter it and, paradoxically, bring it to life.

Deployed as an architectural style, the black silk paper fills the volume of Transfo, carrying away the visitor in a whirl of black surfaces over an uninterrupted, almost organic itinerary. As they move through the area and pass by the vast draperies, the paper’s movement produces a slight rustling, almost a murmur. That unobtrusive sound conveys both memories and the buzz of whispered words, adding an intimate, sensory dimension to the area. In its delicacy, texture and ability to produce that ripple of resonance, the paper becomes a special vector of emotion, creating an introspective ambience in which sensory experience dominates the narrative Like Proust’s madeleine, whose flavour and texture elicit an involuntary, distant memory from the depths of the writer’s mind, the forms created by Joël Andrianomearisoa act as triggers for emotion, vessels for the projection of feelings, expectations and possibilities. So when Marcel Proust writes, “Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind.”, in their way, the black silk paper sails on display create a genuine inner landscape, rekindling dormant memories and encouraging each visitor to explore their own feelings and remembrances.

In different rooms, lines of neon lighting organise the itinerary and suggest a number of possible paths. Those vertical or horizontal lines punctuate the tour and serve as links between the different floors and so between darkness and light. While Joël Andrianomearisoa’s work indeed reflects minimalist aesthetics – especially in his use of simple, often geometric forms and neon lights – his sobriety interacts with divergent colours, shapes and textures, which convey a certain kind of lyricism, enabling a variety of emotions to emerge. Playing on contrasts of black and white, light and shadow, and matt and gloss surfaces, the artist creates areas of tension, areas that confuse the eye and produce contradictory waves of affect. The friction excites restrained, deeply rooted emotion. The breath of contrast gives rise to various forms and imbues them with a fragile intensity and almost melancholic presence. In Andrianomearisoa’s art, contrast does not divide, but links. Generating a field of resonance, an opportunity for a conversation of polarities, the contrasts tend to encourage the emergence of an intermediate poetry, able to reflect the complexity, volatility and lyrical nature of human emotions.

At the heart of Joël Andrianomearisoa’s work, poetry and a textual dimension also play a central role. Words are part of the exhibition as a whole, from the title on the outer facade, through embroidered handwritten phrases to the soundtrack, the words concretise the expression of a number of voices, languages and waves. The internationally acclaimed artist Joël Andrianomearisoa situates his work at the convergence of multiple borders, whether geographic, cultural or linguistic, concomitantly expressed in three different languages: English, Malagasy and French. Although it reflects today’s globalised world, his work rejects cultural standardisation. Indeed, Joël Andrianomearisoa actually points to the cultural specificities suggested by various materials, languages and forms, themselves shaped by migrations, circulation and dialogue between regions. 

To this end, Joël Andrianomearisoa often works with artisans, adding traditional skills to his creations. The delicate embroidery that embellishes his canvases outlines a new poetry. Its mapping links various types of culture and history. The embroidery brings together fragments of phrases, crossings-out and statements forming delicate lines of text characterised by the imperfections of the act of handwriting. Through the intervention of another hand, the practice of embroidery becomes both a means of transmission and an artistic endeavour. That collaboration with outside participants, particularly artisans, underlines a fundamental aspect of Joël Andrianomearisoa’s approach: his work never stands alone, it is augmented through and by the Other. More generally, it is given shape by the stories of materials and actions, as well as the projections of the observer. Joël Andrianomearisoa’s works reflect Roland Barthes’s theorising in La mort de l’auteur (The Death of the Author), asserting that “a text is not made up of a line of words showing a single direction […], but a space of multiple dimensions where various forms of writing meet”, unfolding in an open field of interpretations. They only fully exist in terms of their effect on the observer. Far from expressing arrested meaning, they convey fields of resonance brought to life by the experience.

In the auditorium, a sound creation continues this sensory approach. A Madagascan melody written in collaboration with Môta Soa and played backwards induces a sense of strange familiarity in the listener, while giving free rein to the interpretation, projections and emotions it stirs. The inversion produces an effect of mystery and suspension, conveying the plurality of emotions and the complexity of human feelings. Like a painter wielding his brushes, Joël Andrianomearisoa turns the music into an abstract form, become almost unidentifiable. The profound, ambiguous melody is detached from any immediate recognition, providing each visitor with a space for projection where expectations, memories, hopes and desires mingle. So Joël Andrianomearisoa’s work echoes the words of Kandinsky: “Open your ears to the music, open your eyes to the painting… and leave your thoughts to one side. (…) Have you been transported to a new world? If so, what more can you hope for?” That call to suspend judgment and follow one’s senses is an integral part of the artist’s practice. Combining music and poetry, it incites the visitor to refocus on their inner feelings and fully experience the moment, freed of solely visual demands. Playing in an infinite loop as a serial melody in the whole of the area, the sound creates something of a hypnotic, audible vortex with no beginning or end, become a vector of immersion that turns perception into an almost meditative journey. In this enveloping atmosphere, the experience encourages both an exploration of an unknown sensory world, and introspection, revealing a wealth of layered, interacting emotions. 

From the building’s facade to the different floors, from paper to sound, from embroidery to neon lights, All my hopes belong to you is a tour whose every destination, component and clue contributes to a single project: building a space that engages, that affects, that connects. As if we are crossing a layout of feelings based on a diversity of materials, lighting, contrasts, words and sensations, the experience – both personal and collective – is an invitation to project one’s emotions and reflect on how hope is built and shared. All my hopes belong to you is a deep reflection on that which connects us to each other. With this multiple work, Joël Andrianomearisoa reminds us that hope is never a solitary act: it takes shape in a relationship, in a flow of words, in shared acts, in voices that answer each other. The aim is to see hope as a collective movement, an essential dynamic for life in today’s world, reminding us that our individual or common hopes always depend on others.

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