HOME ALMOST HOME
FLOW GALLERY . ANTANANARIVO . MADAGASCAR
NOVEMBER 22ND . 2024 – JANUARY 22ND . 2025
Curator : Joël Andrianomearisoa
Home Almost Home is a formula that Joël Andrianomearisoa is showcasing around the world. The world and the cities close to his heart. After Paris… Chicago… Madrid… Now comes Antananarivo, before another elsewhere… on another horizon.
A group exhibition curated by the artist in collaboration with :mentalKLINIK . Aina Jo Harimanjato . Alexandra Denage
Alexandre Gourçon . Christian Sanna . Jessy Razafimandimby . Madame Zo . Pascal Martin Saint Léon . Pierrot Men
Rina Ralay Ranaivo.
© Kevin Ramarohetra
ALL OF ME TAKES ALL OF ME
STANDING PINE GALLERY . TOKYO . JAPAN
OCTOBER 26TH – DECEMBER 14TH . 2024
All of me takes all of me is a new series of works by Joël Andrianomearisoa in the continuity of his textile works, created especially for Standing Pine Gallery in Tokyo. Simultaneously paintings and tapestries, these new works question the notion of self-portrait and intimacy.
Joël Andrianomearisoa’s research continues to focus on matter and materiality, particularly textiles and fabrics. And it’s always the emotion that lies in the unreasonable.
But in this new series we have two new approaches that add to the fundamental principles of the artist’s work.
© Standing Pine Gallery
Firstly, it’s about clothes. Clothes as the main and exclusive medium of these works. The artist’s clothes. Suits worn and worn out by the artist. Joël Andrianomearisoa’s uniforms, part of his daily experience. His intimacy. Part of his life.
Secondly, we are talking about painting and colour. Painting as the subject of the self-portrait – painting, real painting too, but instead of oils, acrylics and watercolours… it’s the textile that offers itself to the canvas to give it a new script.
In the intimate unveiling of this work, Joël Andrianomearisoa unsettles both our visual perception and our preconceptions about the ideology of painting. We are on the verge of a New Wave of painting that takes us far away, but always closer to our hearts.
LA VAGUE AFFECTION
BIBLIOTHÈQUE UNIVERSITAIRE DU HAVRE . BAINS DES DOCKS
LE HAVRE . FRANCE
2024
Curator : Gaël Charbau
In partnership with Rubis Mécénat, a journey between the Bibliothèque Universitaire du Havre and the Bains des Docks.
Between two of the city’s iconic landmarks, Joël Andrianomearisoa presents “the alphabet of our feelings”. Two phrases: “Sur la vague infinie se joue le théâtre de nos affections”, “Sur le crépuscule du temps se dessinent nos promesses éternelles” are emblazoned in luminous letters on the façades of the Bains des Docks and the Bibliothèque Universitaire.
© Anne-Bettina Brunet
MEASURES LULLABIES AND WHISPERS
IFA-GALERIE . BERLIN . GERMANY
2024
Curator : Meriem Berrada and Alya Sebti
For his first solo exhibition in Germany, Joël Andrianomearisoa writes on the trails of his memory. He draws inspiration from a lullaby his grandmother sang to him before bedtime. Iny Hono Izy Ravorombazaha [the white bird]. With time, words may be forgotten, but the body remembers the lullaby’s rhythms and vibrations. Andrianomearisoa uses these intervening spaces to imagine new lyrics for his story at ifa Gallery Berlin.
MEASURES LULLABIES AND WHISPERS is an invitation to explore the rhythm of lullabies and the power of memory. The soothing melodies passed on from one generation to another act as a reminder of a deep-rooted sense of connection and belonging. The essence of lullabies, from the feelings of intimacy they evoke to the healing power they hold, is the starting point for Andrianomearisoa’s poetic exploration in this site-specific installation.
© Victoria Tomaschko
For this exhibition, Joël Andrianomearisoa offers an alternative spatial rhythm by creating a new pathway through the gallery. Visitors are welcomed by letters, reminiscent of his childhood lullaby, carried by a monumental wall that disrupts the space. Andrianomearisoa’s use of poetry and architecture creates a new journey—what may seem obvious is far more complex and ambiguous in this new space, hidden behind the wall. Beyond languages, visitors get lost in the meanderings of an abyssal black paper installation, emblematic of his practice. Echoing the LABYRINTH OF PASSIONS presented at the Venice Biennale in 2019, the installation is both dense and fragile and contaminates the space, resonating with the ambivalence of the melody.
Andrianomearisoa continues his poetic exploration with a traditional Malagasy technique of embroidering fabric. MANIFESTE D’UNE RUPTURE, which he created together with artisans from his hometown of Antananarivo, pushes the technical limits of embroidery by integrating raffia, a plant fiber emblematic of Madagascar. In this minimalist chromatism, almost tone on tone, reading the embroidered words is almost impossible. Ancestral gestures become forms of storytelling.
The hauntingly beautiful rhythm of the lullaby, soundtrack of the exhibition, draws visitors towards the back of the room, unveiling an unprecedented video installation. The film, shot entirely in Antananarivo, inaugurates a new artistic practice for Andrianomearisoa. PLEASE SING ME MY SONG BEFORE YOU GO weaves processes of writing, on material, text, and architecture in an imagery that blurs the spatio-temporal framework of narrative. The movie will premiere at the opening on June 6th, 2024.
This exhibition, curated by Meriem Berrada and Alya Sebti, is part of the Untie to Tie platform at ifa Gallery Berlin.
The transdisciplinary project Untie to Tie, which began in 2017, is an exhibition and research platform on colonial structures in contemporary societies.
THINGS AND SOMETHING TO REMEMBER BEFORE DAYLIGHT
ALMINE RECH . PARIS . FRANCE
2024
Curator : Jérôme Sans
Exceptionally, the show brings together Joël Andrianomearisoa’s extraordinarily diverse variety of preferred media to, in a sense, lay bare his vocabulary. Neon lights, sound, poetry, paintings, tapestries, sculptures, everyday objects – like so many elements of his visual language, brought together in a narrow relationship with handicrafts. The exhibition is not so much a celebration of savoir-faire than an investigation of faire, or the act of making, in what appears as an ode to manual work rather than the prefabricated or industrialised. In keeping with the cold, timeless aesthetics of Minimalism, the artist – albeit paradoxically – successfully includes gesture, individuality, voice, poetry and emotion.
© Nicolas Brasseur
Each of the gallery’s spaces appears like a territory serving to investigate new approaches to painting, through the many ways in which textiles can be worked by hand. Cut and sewn, spun and woven, knotted or embroidered, textiles become a thread running through the exhibition, linking one room to the next. Like so many reflections and works on memory and on the human hand, the materials are stuck together and transformed to tell new stories. Here, by manipulating textiles as much as words, the artist comes up with new possibilities – things and something to remember before daylight, as the show’s title poetically suggests – whose invention suggests an interweaving of dreams after nightfall.
Like sound scores animating the space with new energy, his large curtain-paintings redesign the gallery rooms. These non-rigid walls seem to remap the space and open up new ways of moving around, new perceptions. Made up of a variety of textile strips, mixed together and transformed into multilayered abstract paintings, these collage-like hanging elements imbue the exhibition space with a sensory dimension that invites the beholder on a journey from one world to another, like airlocks leading to new entries. The curtains’ near-Proustian quality conveys many memories, sensory remembrances harking back to other scenarios, like distant echoes. The material speaks out in the shadow of itself, in its own silence.
Here, nothing is instantly crystal-clear: the works must be discovered along the way, through the fabrics. Andrianomearisoa turns the exhibition space into his own labyrinth, his own formal laboratory, to reflect the inherent plurality and complexity that lies within each of us, and in the world around us.
The dainty, double-sided curtain-paintings express the brittleness and vulnerability of human experience, but also all our oft-conflicting layers of thoughts and feelings. The two sides, in keeping with the diversity of works on show and their compositional polyphony, are a poetic nod to the plurality of beings and emotions, to their endless shades. Halfway between two timeframes, two romanticisms, two sentimentalities, Joël Andrianomearisoa plays with the poetry of duality. Things and Something to Remember Before Daylight shines light on in-between states and turns the gallery into a threshold space where two realities may coexist: dreams and reality, day and night, time and multifarious, almost indescribable spaces.
His works are produced in Madagascar, Tunisia, Belgium or France; they constantly travel between worlds and languages, naturally switching between French, Malagasy and English. On the borders of many worlds, Joël Andrianomearisoa constantly cross-fertilises territories, know-hows, interstitial spaces and the diverse voices that make up everyday life.
Soundtracked by the exhibition’s title, the large room is home to Camelia Jordana’s whisperings; two neon lights, “Things” and “Something”, ambiguously suggest an open-ended poem, like clues, hints of hidden meanings. Six large paintings, in the same vein as series Les Herbes folles du vieux logis – the title is a tribute to Madagascan poet Maurice Ramarozaka (1931-2010) – recreate imaginary landscapes. In the next room, monochrome Aubusson tapestries – these are woven – appear. Hidden behind a curtain in a small room, embroidered texts are sporadically scattered around. Minimal sculptures made of plant fibres pervade the space. Materials become the re-arranged outline of a new story, like ledgers, like supports for text. Buried in the knots, hidden in the shadows, words are like a mystery waiting to be discovered.
In conclusion, Joël Andrianomearisoa – as ever – brings art into the real world with object editions that are sure to make the show go viral. Lined up on white shelves, many everyday objects: for the home, to wear, to give, to lose… they can find their place in the day-to-day lives of those who pick them up – a potential extension of the exhibition time.
Like a slogan or a poetic statement, Things and Something to Remember Before Daylight can be read in several ways, like a space with multiple entrances that has no start or finish. By brazenly changing the direction of reading, Andrianomearisoa encourages viewers to lose themselves in the intricacies of his paintings and words, to penetrate the mysteries of an impending sunrise, in the suspended hours of nighttime when everything is the stuff of dreams, reverie and sentimentality.
Jérôme Sans
Y SI MADRID FUERA MI CASA
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . MADRID . SPAIN
2024
Curator : Joël Andrianomearisoa
Narrating geographies
Those of other geographies but especially those of the intimate.
This is beginning of the proposition Y SI MADRID FUERA MI CASA.
A process that Joël Andrianomearisoa has been implementing for some time around the globe, in the cities close to his heart.
After Paris… Antananarivo… and Chicago,
Now Madrid.
A formula in which he is more than an artist.
He becomes above all the host of a house!
An he invites his friends, his companions and his accomplices to his home,
to invade space,
to build the house of dreams and desires,
to discuss around the world and time.
In Madrid, in a spanish breath, la Maison becomes la Casa,
sensual, spiritual, conflictual, timeless and eternal.
A house of time is installed in Madrid.
Within time, the time of time.
LE CRÉPUSCULE DES PROMESSES ÉTERNELLES
FLOW GALLERY . ANTANANARIVO . MADAGASCAR
2023
This exhibition is the first chapter in a cycle that Joël Andrianomearisoa is unfolding across time and geography. This cycle begins here in Antananarivo, his hometown, where his last exhibition was held several years ago. In this exhibition, he brings together the hallmarks of his visual and artistic identity, drawing the strength of his aesthetic not only from the poetry and musicality of words, but also from materials such as textiles, paper and metal.
© Kevin Ramarohetra
LITANIE DES HORIZONS OBSCURS
ALMINE RECH GALLERY . FRONT SPACE . PARIS . FRANCE
2023
In line with Joël Andrianomearisoa’s work and his recent artistic interventions based on evolution and constant change, such as the recent exhibition “Decay: An Ode to the Impermanent” at the Buro Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Malagasy-French artist takes us on a journey through the history of his “Litanies des horizons obscurs” through 3 chapters during his presentation with Almine Rech.
First: the word. An emblematic figure in the artist’s work, the word is presented with the launch of a collection of poems, “Sentimental whispers”, in collaboration with Almine Rech Editions. This first chapter is complemented by the exhibition of three works featuring the artist’s verses.
© Nicolas Brasseur
The second chapter consists of three historic textile works. One set of 24 pieces ‘Labyrinth of Passions’ 2018, and a large piece ‘La Dérive des Sentiments II’ 2016. Joël Andrianomerisoa was awarded the 4th Audemars Piguet Prize for his work, ‘The Labyrinth of Passions’, exhibited at VIP ARCO-Madrid 2016, becoming the first non-Spanish artist to receive this award.
The third chapter is devoted to drawing. A medium that allows Joël to let himself be completely carried away by his intuition. These works, a selection of which was presented by the gallery at Art Brussels 2023, reflect the authenticity of the artist’s practice as well as his formal restlessness.
“Les Litanies des horizons obscurs” will round off this experience, during which visitors will live different stories through this evolving display. These textile pieces, presented at MACAAL in Marrakech, reflect Joël’s desire to return to the sources, as well as his interest in craftsmanship, by rediscovering ancestral techniques and bringing them to the forefront of contemporary art.
MY HEART BELONGS TO THE OTHER
CHURCH PROJECTS . CAPE TOWN . SOUTH AFRICA
2023
The other is a conversation with the land on the other side.
Land Madagascar.
Land not only perceived as a territory but also as an intrigue.
Rather a scenario named the other.
A display around the desire towards the other, the vital dependance towards the other.
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
The other is a mystery yet the other attracts us
The other is intriguing yet the other inspires us
The other is a stranger yet the other calls out to us
The other is a geography and this land is calling us
The project itself is a metaphor
without giving the land its name
Thus the presence of the other, of others
The other of names full of symbols
To read, to quote, to dress and undress
The other is a blind map drown in the darkness of our desires.
ON A NEVER ENDING HORIZON A FUTURE NOSTALGIA TO KEEP THE PRESENT ALIVE
NOOR FESTIVAL . RIYADH . SAUDI ARABIA
2022
Curator : Hervé Mikaeloff
From Antananarivo to Paris, from mixed-media installation to Dior collaboration, Andrianomearisoa’s work is simply magnetizing. Inspired by the cadence of the city, his textural work triggers an emotional response in audiences of all ages. Unsurprisingly, he has been invited to collaborate with some of the world’s greatest names over the years.
ON A NEVER ENDING HORIZON A FUTURE NOSTALGIA TO KEEP THE PRESENT ALIVE
Using neon lights and metal, On a never ending horizon a future nostalgia to keep the present alive was commissioned for Noor Riyadh and speaks of love, hope and dreams. Or to use the artist’s words: “a sign, a light, a poem… The horizon is the playground for our eyes, but most of all, our dreams. Here lies the theatre of our affections, but most of all, our hopes. On the horizon is where we call for a new future whilst we dance on the wave of the present time, following the moment’s steps. Light is the essential ingredient that allows us to dream of other worlds, other times.”
With this installation, Andrianomearisoa invites you to question time, your horizons and, as always, your emotions and desires.
Hervé Mikaeloff
© Ammar Abd Rabbo
THE FIVE CONTINENTS OF ALL OUR DESIRES
ZEITZ MOCAA . CAPE TOWN . SOUTH AFRICA
2022
Curator : Storm Janse Van Rensburg
The atrium of Zeitz MOCAA welcomes a new, site-specific commission of monumental scale by Joël Andrianomearisoa. The Five Continents of All Our Desires celebrates relations and connections. Constructed from Andrianomearisoa’s signature material, black silk paper, six large-scale sculptures form a suspended archipelago in a poetic reference to land masses and geographies of the imagination. For Andrianomearisoa, the work speaks to both migration and language — and the ongoing search for zones of engagement and desire. He constructs a view of the world that is fragile, ambiguous, open-ended and about new possibilities for human contact.
© Dillon Marsh
The work is conceived in dialogue with the concrete interior of the museum, and what remains of the original silos of the building; it is both in play and in visual tension with its surroundings. Whilst appearing as large black masses, the thin and soft materiality of the work allows for subtle atmospheric responses to become visible — such as paper rustling due to airflows caused by human movement.
The Five Continents of All Our Desires is accompanied by a sound installation, and a display of 40 drawings—a first, significant showing of the artist’s graphic works. Andrianomearisoa has further collaborated with the Zeitz MOCAA curatorial team and retail partners of the museum to develop an exclusive range of objects that will be on sale. All proceeds from the sale of these items will go towards supporting the work of the museum.
This commission was made possible through a grant from Fonds Yavarhoussen, Madagascar.
Storm Janse Van Rensburg
OUR LAND JUST LIKE A DREAM
MACAAL . MARRAKECH . MOROCCO
2022
Curator : Meriem Berrada
Our Land Just Like A Dream is an invitation to experience relationships between materials, forms, and territories in a different way, challenging the commonly accepted boundary between artistic and artisanal creations. For its very first monographic exhibition dedicated to a contemporary artist, MACAAL has invited Joël Andrianomearisoa to occupy all of the museum’s spaces in an exploration of Moroccan traditional knowledge. The artist engages dialogue with diverse artistic perspectives in an immersive scenography, punctuated by a selection of works from the Fondation Alliances collections. The exhibition’s title is a verse, a chanted poem or mantra that speaks of origin and earth, evoking the infinite possibilities held within the material—raw material—that Joël Andrianomearisoa appropriates, reshapes, or reinvents. The artist is fascinated by ancestral textile arts, and has collaborated with master artisans for more than two decades. From his native city of Antananarivo (Madagascar) to Aubusson (France) by way of Udaipur (India), he takes pleasure in the juxtaposition of his own artistic approach with the excellence and poetics of the gesture crafts.
© Ayoub El Bardii
The works produced for Our Land Just Like A Dream were created exclusively in situ, making use of a diversity of traditional skills in an ongoing conversation with the people who practice them. The resulting works are his personal interpretations of Morocco’s artistic heritage as well as his tribute to hand craft, a vector of secular transmission. Sensitive to the materials that he encounters, the artist spans various mediums with commitment and with elegance. Wickerwork, metalwork, ceramics and embroidery are all in service to his poetic vision, through textile installations, metallic sculptures, or drawings on organic paper; all possibilities offered by the artist’s new host territory. This same quest for resonance led Andrianomearisoa to invite six artists to engage in unexpected visual conversations. Each of his accomplices—visual artist, actress, or musician—explores goldsmithing, textile, installation or engraving in response to Joël Andrianomearisoa’s lyrical odyssey. Our Land Just Like A Dream brings together material, vocal, and spoken word crafts to create a geography with multiple points of entry.
RANDOM DESIRES FOR A CERTAIN KIND OF ARCHITECTURE
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . MADRID . SPAIN
2022
Random desires for a certain kind of architecture was conceived during a studio master class that Andrianomearisoa gave to architecture students at Confluence Institute in Paris, in which the final exercise was to propose a project from a different approach to architecture, through alternative inspirations: a fragrance, a gaze, a taste, a piece of fashion design, … The artist decided to carry out the same exercise for this individual exhibition.
In Random desires for a certain kind of architecture Andrianomearisoa approaches architecture departing from emotions, words and moods, through pastel drawings, paintings, textile works and sculptures. The result is a surprising display of emotional rationalization, an exercise in balancing dualities, divided into three different acts: gesture, projection and volume.
© Sabrina Amrani gallery
The first part of the exhibition opens with pastel drawings, as a preliminary step to the materialization of an architecture, working first on flat surfaces and then elevating those concepts to three-dimensional structures. The drawings give way to vigorous paintings on canvas, where Andrianomearisoa introduces color in a furious abstract explosion of architectural projection, sentimental and nostalgic.
The exhibition continues with the new body of textile works Random Desires, which are executed by the artist as if architectural constructions, and somehow resemble building facades, with overlapping bricks and even windows. Using discarded and found fabrics, Andrianomearisoa knits architecture, weaves construction, and sews structures.
Finally, the volume is confirmed as one of the artist’s current interests in the form of seventeen sculptures of different sizes supported by a massive pedestal that dominates and occupies the space of the gallery, in a reaction of the artist to the very idea of the gallery and its function. The sculptures convey texts in the three languages that are part of the artist’s life: Malagasy, French and English, with the subtle and poetic lyrics signature of Andrianomearisoa.
Random desires for a certain kind of architecture answers the question of whether it is possible to make architecture from unconventional perspectives, randomly through time and through our desires, the desires of the world, an architecture for all.
Jal Hamad
LES PRÉMICES D’UNE MÉLANCOLIE INFINIE
STANDING PINE . NAGOYA . JAPAN
2022
To speak of melancholy is to speak of duality.
The duality of time.
The duality of emotions.
The duality of desires.
The duality of bodies.
The duality of our lives.
One day alive, one day dead.
One day smile, one day sadness.
One day here, one day in Antananarivo.
One day in, one day out.
A black day, a white day.
© Standing Pine
It is in the interstice of these dualities that Andrianomearisoa draws the meaning and the ardor of his work. Between the shadow of a black line and the light of white cotton, the work reveals itself. Here for his solo exhibition for the first time in two years in Nagoya, through textiles, he combines black and white but also draws an imprint in oil pastel on paper.
Vertical lines like the double beat rhythms of our heartbeats. Lines drawn sometimes straight sometimes interrupted like tears that flow without ever taking a single trajectory. Tears of joy or sorrow.
In this new proposal Andrianomearisoa transports us to his universe always filled with emotion. This emotion that he does not want abstract but always material like an infinite exercise. The materiality of emotions to be read without particular languages and above all without geography.
Joël Andrianomearisoa
JOSEP LE MONDE ET MOI
JOSEP THE WORLD AND I
JOSEP EL MÓN I JO
JOSEP EL MUNDO Y YO
CENTRE GRAU-GARRIGA D’ART TEXTÌL CONTEMPORANI . SANT-CUGAT DEL VALLÈS . SPAIN
2022
Curator : Esther Grau-Garriga I Quintana
An image, which links the work Les Nouvelles cartographies du désir by Joël Andrianomearisoa, in the exhibition Brise du Rouge Soleil (Aigues-Mortes, France, 2021), with the work monument A l’Anarquia (1976) by Josep Grau-Garriga, is the germ of the exhibition Josep le monde et moi. Bringing these two works together was intuitively revealing, and was the starting point for inviting Joël Andrianomearisoa to exhibit at the Centre Grau-Garriga d’Art Tèxtil Contemporani and at the monastery of Sant Cugat.
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa .
The exhibition brings together two artists from different generations who have never met, with experiences and imaginaries belonging to distant places and times, but who are nevertheless able to dialogue on the basis of their common creative attitude.With very particular artistic expressions, and with a body of work that apparently have little to do with each other – beyond the use of textile – Andrianomearisoa and Grau-Garriga share a fascinating combination of passion and intimacy. their work, with their own languages and codes, converge in nuclear and transversal aspects, where roots, affections, links and a deep respect for the details of the lived experience, coexist with porosity, with the desire to be penetrated by new and diverse horizons. Monumental and intimate, expansive and symbolic, Joël and Josep share the same way of living through creation, while they create what they live they experiment, construct, elaborate and transform with different materials, avoiding frontiers… on the loom, on the sheet of paper, on canvas or in the space.
Josep le monde et moi undertakes symbolic worlds in white, black and red, colours that dress these rooms with traces of the physical worlds and the emotional universes of two artists who weave their world by letting the world weave them.
This journey is a small world of their worlds, which begins with the silent white of intimacy, the delicacy of memories, and the revival of affections. It continues with the dense black night of stillness, solitude, sensuality and infinity. and it ends with the illuminating red, the red of passion for the discovery of other worlds.
Finally, the world of the angels in the chapterhouse of the cloister of the Sant-Cugat monastery; dancing with the angels, by Andrianomearisoa, and Mort I resurrecció, by Grau-Garriga, two large installations that dialogue, from the mystery, on what is no longer earthly.
Esther Grau-Garriga I Quintana
LES HERBES FOLLES DU VIEUX LOGIS
PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY . MILAN . ITALY
2022
Les herbes folles du vieux logis is the title chosen by Joël Andrianomearisoa for his latest series of works. A title borrowed from the Malagasy poet Maurice Ramarozaka and from his collection, the one who considered poetry as a way of being and living across multiple geographies.
This new series in three steps – pastel drawings, textile paintings, squares of golden silk threads on cotton fabric – is an opportunity to once again evoke one of the constants of the artist’s work: the alliance and the dialogue with this original material that are fabrics, linked to his homeland, of which he makes himself the heir.
Click here to access to the full version of Françoise Docquiert’s text Les Herbes Folles Du Vieux Logis
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa © Greta Belintende
AU RYTHME DE NOS DÉSIRS DANSONS SUR LA VAGUE DU TEMPS
CHÂTEAU DE VILLERS-COTTERÊTS . FRANCE
2022
Curator : Bernard Blistène
Joël Andrianomearisoa, a pioneer of Malagasy contemporary art and a well-known figure on the international art scene. He studied architecture at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris and immediately began to experiment with a wide variety of techniques and materials, which he uses in all possible forms.
A visual artist, with an appreciation of the written word as well as the many forms of poetry, Andrianomearisoa here creates a monumental work from a short text inviting the viewer “to enter into a dialogue with the world “. Taking words as a material to be sculpted, which he carves out in metal, he builds an architectural structure shaped like a sign on which he hangs the sentence, in order to encourage the visitor to echo his invitation.
Conceived between 2021 and 2022 and presented for the first time in the grounds of the Château de Villers-Cotterêts – the future Cité internationale de la langue française – the work is an invitation both to fully appreciate the power of words and to dream of a re-enchanted future.
Bernard Blistène
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
HISTOIRE D’UN DÉPART
TOULOUSE BLAGNAC AIRPORT . TOULOUSE . FRANCE
2021 – 2023
Toulouse Blagnac Airport and Les Abattoirs, Musée-Frac Occitanie Toulouse (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the City of Toulouse and Regional Fund of Contemporary Art for the region) have been working together since 2012 to present a series of exhibitions within the Airport in order to offer its passengers and visitors suspended moments, a breath of fresh air, and to create a real experience.
© Théo Verdier
ZARIDAINA . GEOGRAPHY OF DESIRE
LE SILO U1 . CHÂTEAU THIERRY . FRANCE
2021
Through the installations he proposes in this exhibition at Silo U1, we can guess the artist’s path that combines a skill learned in fashion design and costume making with a training in plastic arts and architecture. The meters of fabric that he collects become for example sculptures under his fingers, both monumental and fragile. The crumpled, compressed and cut materials take place in space in geometric forms that unfold a sensitive landscape.
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
BRISE DU ROUGE SOLEIL
TOWERS AND RAMPARTS OF AIGUES-MORTES . FRANCE
2021
Curator : N’Goné Fall
Brise du rouge soleil (Breeze of the red sun), carte blanche for the artist Joël Andrianomearisoa.
Around the towers and walls of Aigues-Mortes in France’s Camargue district, Joël Andrianomearisoa presents a sensitive, poetic itinerary of 18 installations. Reflecting his imagination and echoing the history of the monument and its territory, the prodigious layout created by the artist gradually appears, inducing a series of emotions and surprises. The visitor winds out a thread that interlinks different narratives – some told by the artist; others based on the monument’s past and our personal ventures.
Inspired by the memory of the ancient citadel-port on the Mediterranean coast, the Malagasy poet Maurice Ramarozaka (1931-2010), the lagoon and salt marshes, and materials from Camargue and other places, the artist guides us on an endless journey from tower to tower and along the walls of Aigues-Mortes in a tour resembling a long poem, like a roll of papyrus that reveals mysterious clues.
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
LES HERBES FOLLES DU VIEUX LOGIS
DOMAINE DE CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE . FRANCE
2021
Curator : Chantal Colleu-Dumond
The 2021 Art Season is once again on the theme of nature, and the work of around fifteen new artists, including some original creations, as in previous years, interact with the landscape and architecture of the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire.
First and foremost, two fantastic artists, Miquel Barceló and Paul Rebeyrolle are celebrated this time. These artists both have a great energy and enjoy working with raw materials, playing with the thickness of objects and the textures of the tangible and of nature. With the power of tormented despair, they express their deepest feelings of the pain and joy of being, of living. Miquel Barceló designs an original artwork in terracotta and ceramic for a grove in the Historic Grounds, while the Château will house around thirty beautiful landscape representations by Paul Rebeyrolle. Abdul Rahman Katanani uses his own experiences of violence and suffering to present some surprising barbed wire nests in the trees throughout the Grounds.
As a stark contrast, Chiharu Shiota’s delicate dark and web-like fibres will take over the Lower Le Fenil Gallery, much like vibrant nerve cells, while the Donkey Stables house Carole Solvay’s subtle creations using wire and feathers. The colourful delicacy of Sheila Hicks’ work is displayed in the Château’s Grand spiral staircase, while Safia Hijos’ poetic creepers made from ceramic climbs the walls of the Stables.
For the very first time, drawings are exhibited at Chaumont-sur-Loire, in the Agnès Varda Courtyard Galleries, featuring the dreamlike and philosophical works of Fabien Mérelle, and the poetic worlds of François Réau and Min Jung-Yeon. A collection of prints by Jean Dubuffet takes pride of place in the Château’s Porcupine Gallery, with the extraordinary series entitled Les Phénomènes.
The adventure continues with Pascal Convert, who adds to his glass library and roots, unveiled in 2020, with an incredible crystallised child’s bedroom, while Chris Drury, who has already created a very beautiful Carbon pool for the Domain, brings a brand-new original piece to the Bee Barn. Last but not least, a never-before-seen outdoor creation from Joël Andrianomearisoa interacts with the plant world of Agnès Varda Courtyard.
These new creations, when combined with the artworks already on display, provide visitors to the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire with a wonderfully poetic and revitalising experience.
Chantal Colleu-Dumond
POUR NE JAMAIS RENCONTRER LA DERNIÈRE HEURE
MAISON MARIA CASARÈS . ALLOUE . FRANCE
2021
Curator : Marie-Cécile Zinsou
With the help of a guide and in groups, visitors discover the history of the Logis de la Vergne (listed in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments) and particularly the life of Maria Casarès: her life as an artist, a refugee, a woman of the 20th century. Beyond the traces left by its illustrious owner, this visit is also an opportunity to discover the work of the artist, Joël Andrianomearisoa. The summer of 2021 has a special flavor. It is the last summer where visitors can discover the house as Maria Casarès left it. Necessary renovation work could not wait any longer. In order to celebrate this particular moment in the history of the Domaine, we had to ritualize this mourning in order to welcome this new stage.
We asked Joël Andrianomearisoa to come and intervene in these spaces and to propose installations in the Logis, to put into perspective with all his sensitivity and poetry this problem of the passing of time and the traces of the heritage that remain.
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
TRANSLATION OF ALL OUR LOST PASSIONS AND OUR FUTURE DESIRES
KUNSTHALLE PRAHA . PRAGUE . CZECH REPUBLIC
2021
Curator : Christelle Havranek
In the spirit of the Mail Art movement, Joël Andrianomearisoa strives to establish a new type of exchange between his works and the public, between his convictions and the reality of the world. To engage with the transforming spaces of the Kunsthalle Praha, the artist has conceived an epistolary project, which he calls ‘Translations of all our lost passions and our future desires’.
Joël Andrianomearisoa has decided to display this title in glowing neon letters on the building’s façade, and to write this text in his mother tongue: Malagasy. The decision not to translate a rare language, in a location where it has little chance of being understood, is deliberate. Not to translate is to avoid the ‘approximation of discourse which produces a new discourse”.
The enigmatic sentence invites us to consider otherness. Language and multilingualism have always lain at the heart of Joël Andrianomearisoa’s approach. As a multicultural artist, he manipulates words much as he does objects; assembling, combining and interpreting textures and texts from here and elsewhere, creating a protean, polyphonic work.
© Lukás Masner © Shotby.us © Vojtěch Veškrna
DANCING WITH THE ANGELS
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . MADRID . SPAIN
2021
Joël Andrianomearisoa does not impose certainty, he offers a sensitive exploration of this border which freezes all duality. He likes to weave in this gap, from a multitude of possibilities. By composing serenely in this in-between, he comes here to challenge the definition of a desire that ends up preempting pleasure. In a fruitful exercise of desire, never associated with its culpable counterpart, Joël summons the shared rhythmic allowed by dance: a space of expression and bodily freedom created with the Other.
Through the figure of the angel, both benevolent and invisible, he invokes this Other and brings him face to face in a game of reminiscences in several forms. It invites physical memory and pays homage, to learned shivers, to plundered ecstasies, to the part of the other that one carries within oneself. He suggests that we follow the intimate path choreographed with those who continue to live in each of us.
© Sabrina Amrani gallery
At the entrance of the gallery, like a commemorative banner, The Angels chant a succession of first names whose various sounds prevent any geographic circumscription. He says nothing about the relationship he has with those who carry them, those who have permeated him and whom he ends up
inviting to settle in him. Far from the alienating meaning associated with desire, the artist cherishes and nurtures these moments, these relationships, these inspirations. He makes these “openings to the world” indelible and celebrates them with poetic and aesthetic power.
Joël creates a walk from a multitude of artificial flowers gleaned online and around the world, whether or not they are a faithful reflection of species existing in Nature. Replicas of tulips, tropical flowers or agapanthus intertwine, tame and coexist in a totemic symbiosis. Further refining the already fragile border of dualistic representations, Joël does not decide between celebration and commemoration. The installation combines them without creating an amalgam. The artist-florist gives each of them the freedom to display themselves in their diversity by inviting them to inhabit space, together.
Conceived as a series of irregular landscapes, the series of drawings lets glimpse here and there, through its repetitive linearities, presences and absences, and reminds us that both are never absolute. Combining the precision of graphite with the indelibility of pastel, the drawings reveal traces
of memory lying on the reassuring softness of the textile fiber. Through an intuitive but never improvised arrangement, Joël Andrianomearisoa takes us into a sensitive questioning about what we are, through the irrefutable affirmation of desire. Without ever freezing in a geography, he whispers an answer to us in several voices.
Meriem Berrada
WE WERE SO VERY MUCH IN LOVE
MUSÉE D’ART ROGER-QUILLIOT . CLERMONT-FERRAND . FRANCE
2020
Curators : Christine Bouilloc, Nathalie Roux and Christine Athenor
In July 2020, the artist presented his project for Clermont-Ferrand, which was as follows: WE WERE SO VERY MUCH IN LOVE
“The phrase echoes like a nostalgic appeal alluding to a past love, a story from another time, a better time. But the idea is not love, not alone. We are not dealing with love, but rather with what revolves around that love, a love with a capital L or a love with a capital B (for break-up).
The temporality of love, its former time, the end, the separation, its present and what comes after, and how to put it right… Romance is ultimately a pretext for us to talk about our time, which is finally a time that remains unchanged, but which has certainly changed our perceptions – nostalgic ones that lead to the promise of an undoubtedly better future. That is why the proposition is divided into different stages.
© Juan Cruz Ibañez
The zero stage: a prelude that uses light to set the tone, the iconic title We were so very much in love, a word to the city, an appeal to the world. Then the fugue, as at the opera, with a curtain rising in the middle of the atrium. The drama of our affections, from transparency to opacity, will play out on that curtain.
Stage two: lacrimosa, a time for tears of comfort for the loss of a loved one; a distress that will simultaneously unfold in reflections stretching to infinity, like a mirror ball whose facets are a day of joy and a night of grief.
Stage three: black, a projection into sadness, sombreness, distress, like an impossible, dead-end inventory. One last time, the fabrics are there to remind us of the sensuality of beings and a last breath.
Stage four: remnants, the archaeology of our passions, the high points of vertigo, textiles projected among fashion dresses and, at the same time, windless Madagascan shrouds, the dead tree of my new life saying that we are not all dead.
Stage five: the promise. A long, tender piece of music marks the time of our heartbeats: boom; boom and again boom. Yes, we are alive, and even at four in the morning by the light of a smoked cigarette, desire will always be present.
Other acts will have their place in this project of timeless chapters, such as a scrap of shroud at the Musée Bargoin or textile scenes engaging the permanent collection of the MARQ in conversations. And to conclude, like a consolation, the public will be invited to acquire a few ‘sentimental products’ at the museum’s gift shop – souvenirs of that lost love or the wonderful romance to come.
To our finest emotions, long live love.”
THIS EVENING THE NIGHT DOESN’T WANT TO END
DOMAINE DE CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE . FRANCE
2020
Curator : Chantal Colleu-Dumond
At Chaumont-sur-Loire, Joël Andrianomearisoa employs a variety of materials from silk paper to textiles and plays on subtleties of light to tell a stunningly poetic tale.
A voyage translated from the night
materials of light and absence
the immaterial nature of the invisible world
black light to the green of life
melancholy
the first day, the last night
the infinite horizon
the geometry of the angle that brings tears
the present
© Studio Joël Andrianomearisoa
Continuing the voyage begun with the piece I HAVE FORGOTTEN THE NIGHT, produced and presented at the first Madagascar Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Joël Andrianomearisoa now brings his work to the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire.
The message of the night is not limited to the piece alone, but involves a total deployment of the cycle of night until day and its eternal repetition.
Five new productions punctuate each chapter of the account. The proposition is divided into 5 stages that translate the intangibility of this invisible world. A journey through the dark night of oblivion to the full daylight of life. Melancholy sets the rhythm, paper the expression and textiles the respiration.
Chapter 1: I have forgotten the night (Galerie basse du Fenil)
Chapter 2: Twilight (Cour Agnès Varda)
Chapter 3: Waiting for the dawn that will catch us on the banks of sleep (Galleries of the Cour Agnès Varda)
Chapter 4: Full daylight (Galleries of the Cour Agnès Varda)
Chapter 5: Never-ending story (Galleries of the Cour Agnès Varda)
SERENADE IS NOT DEAD
DALLAS CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM . DALLAS . UNITED-STATES OF AMERICA
2020
Curator : Laurie Ann Farrell
For the artist “serenade is a sentimental act, but above all, an act of humanity – a way to put feelings, emotions and desires back at the center of discussion. A way to address something we have lost in our society today.” Furthermore, Andrianomearisoa’s exhibition affirms that “seduction is not dead, emotions are not dead and we are (all) still alive!”
Serenade Is Not Dead highlights Andrianomearisoa’s architectural background through a carefully orchestrated grid presentation of his textile references to the body, serigraphic landscapes, appropriated and repackaged “sentimental products”, and sculptures offering a mini retrospective of the artist’s working methods. Viewers will connect to the artist’s visual explorations of love and longing (or “territories of desire”) through abstraction, references to the figure, conceptual appropriation, and photography.
Serenade Is Not Dead is supported by Nathalie Aureglia, Monaco.
© Dallas Contemporary Museum
TOMORROW, TOMORROW. THOSE ARE FLOWERS. SO HOW ABOUT TOMORROW?
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . MADRID . SPAIN
2019
The impact strength of the work of Joël Andrianomearisoa, the tracing he left in space, his mark, has always had an ostentatiously present character. The energy it generates continually recalls its presence, emphasizes the lack of time, a space created from chronological laws, an incisiveness that shakes the monochrome. This aspect that constitutes the totality of the artistic production of Andrianomearisoa plays with the no-time, highlighting its repetition, marking the rhythm of a not before and not after, when using references that sink their roots in ancient rites and therefore they seem to look to the past; what they really do is bring to light, in visual and spatial terms, the visceral beginnings of humanity, the non-chronological but inextricably constitutive roots of human nature and its way of being in the world.
© Sabrina Amrani gallery
The use that Andrianomearisoa has always made of different expressive tools is presented here in all its wealth of details that highlight the procedural excellence and the basic meaning dictated by the fold, the meticulousness: aspects through which the space reveals the secrets of color, its evolutions and its density. The operation carried out by the artist for this personal exhibition may seem at first sight a contradiction with what has been said up to now, especially if the accent is placed on the expressive and almost pungent force of the presented works, whose invisible needles annoy the air, or perhaps they stimulate their retreat to make room for the advance of a trinitarian or destructive dimension of any space-time division.
In fact, the division proposed by the tour within the exhibition space is a real ironic position, subtle and profound at the same time with respect to the conception of time. The questioning in relation to the most hidden meaning of the past, the most appropriate meaning of the present and the most probable of the future is investigated even more deeply when the artist uses these chronological compartments considering them as different moments of his artistic career and, therefore, using himself as a guinea pig.
The entrance to the gallery consists of the presence of a work entitled Dark Sky (2013), which acts as a representation of the past, but which gives the impression of being a door to the revelation of the work itself. The visitor is faced with having to deal with a game whose purpose is to find the real entrance to the exhibition space, which underscores the intrinsic difficulty of coming into explicit contact with the work and, once the correct form of entrance is found, light is revealed, the revelation is fulfilled. It seems like to be entering the creative process of the artist, that process made only of moments in which the form is revealed in its dimensionality and in which Bergsonian duration finds its vertex of expression: a temporary absence in which the creative gesture lasts in its absolute manifestation.
The second part of the exhibition consists of an installation that refers to the present: through a set of works, suspended or not, the artist’s most recent production is presented and what is visible here is not time, the work of art as such. The composite elements of mirrors, besides constituting the whole work, act as a visual game of reflections of the past and the future or, therefore, of their conjunction in a single timeless stage that develops in several directions.
The third and final part of the exhibition renders clear the artist’s radical questioning of the most appropriate meaning of these temporal giants by ironising about the customary conception of the future term, as well as shared expectations towards this temporal dimension.
The future is now so visible and clear that it is clearer than the present. So clear as to be declared, to be self-declared: a true visual tautology. Finally, what in reality probably this textile wall and its repeated words “Tomorrow, tomorrow” want to represent is a space trampoline, an immediate reference to the space of the present that also includes that tomorrow or that includes it without naming it. And you, do you like flowers?
Domenico de Chirico . 2019
BLUE TAKE ME TO THE END OF ALL LOVES
PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY . MILAN . ITALY
2019
CARTOGRAPHY OF DESIRES, THE SPACE BETWEEN US
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . ENCOUNTERS SECTOR ART BASEL IN HONG KONG
2019
Curator : Alexie Glass-Kantor
The Encounters section at Art Basel Hong Kong, where large-scale sculptures and installations are shown, will reflect “the accelerated sense of absurdity at a time where persistent political revolutions and social uprisings are part of our new normal”, according to Alexie Glass-Kantor, the section’s curator for the fifth year running. “The theme, ‘Still We Rise’, explores thresholds between life and death, between collapse and resurrection.”
Over half the participants are from the region, she says. “Most of these artists are also not household names.” This year’s presentation includes eight site-specific projects and four existing installations (all the works are for sale).
The work consists of four lines of wood beams at different heights, from where 21 linen sheets with silk paper elements hang. One of the beams holds seven fluorescent lamps, which mark the acts into which the work is divided.
It is neither a painting, a sculpture nor an architectural assemblage, although it has something of each. The work is an installation that has different elements that refer to architecture, painting and sculpture, but also to love, desire, loss, despair and hope.
Gareth Harris . 2019
NO HABÍAMOS TERMINADO DE HABLAR SOBRE EL AMOR
CENTRO DE ARTE ALCOBENDAS . MADRID . SPAIN
2018
In Joël Andrianomearisoa’s work melancholy, memories and personal narrative are intertwined in the physical and emotional memory of the materials that the artist uses to build his pieces. The individual exhibition No habíamos terminado de hablar sobre el Amor invites the visitor to go through a story in six acts where structures, silk paper and textiles invoke memories and feelings.
The show extends beyond the exhibition areas of the center, invading the media library and other areas of the museum, in which the artist intervenes with textual works on vinyl. The work of Joël Andrianomearisoa is a research on light: as if he was a painter Andrianomearisoa works with volume, matter and light using, instead of pigments and oil, textiles and the color black as a point of departure.
© Sabrina Amrani Gallery
SUR UN HORIZON INFINI SE JOUE LE THÉÂTRE DE NOS AFFECTIONS
FONDATION ZINSOU & MUSÉE OUIDAH . COTONOU . BÉNIN
2018
Curator : Marie-Cécile Zinsou
The Fondation Zinsou hands over all its areas at the headquarters of the foundation in the Ouidah museum in Cotonou to the artist Joël Andrianomearisoa for a carte blanche in 3 acts and 3 areas, entitled: Sur un horizon infini se joue le théâtre de nos affections. This is the artist’s first large personal exhibition on the continent and in Benin. He occupies the spaces with a fresh rhythm, deploying installations, words, objects, images, sounds and moods assisted by the foundation’s entire team, friends and local knowhow.
Sur un horizon infini se joue le théâtre de nos affections is a sensory exploration that interacts with each individual.
It examines feelings, desire, the world, our time, a meeting for a day or forever, a departure, travel, a before and an after.
A constantly developing workshop of aspects and encounters in motion.
A world specific to the artist, touched by a duality where gentleness and a caress sometimes come up against coldness and fragility.
In cultivating that ambiguity, Joël Andrianomearisoa reveals to us the collective construction of an obsessive emotional architecture, sometimes dark, but above all sensual.
© Yanick Folly
ACT I
For the duration of a meeting or forever
– headquarters of the Fondation Zinsou in Cotonou –
The scene unfolds in a hotel somewhere in the world.
It is one of those grand hotels from another age, but excessively up-to-date.
From the reception to the gardens, from the wings to the stairs via the rooms and ballroom, glances dart and bodies meet.
Heartbeats – A fragile instant.
In time with these tremors, mirrors negotiate with our loving images.
A wild bouquet embraces the song of the distant land.
In a sentimental waiting room, sheets strive for perfection.
The drama of our society plays out In the Ballroom.
And a feast in the stylish restaurant already heralds the end.
Off to the station, the harbour, the airport…
ACT II
The Last Kiss
– Jardin d’Essai – Ouidah road-
“There, we curl up,
dream of the world
and above all exchange a last kiss
before sinking into the black light of oblivion.”
ACT III
After
Oblivion
– Ouidah Museum –
After the encounters come separations. Some will leave, others remain.
A boarding gate, a station platform, a landing stage at night, all buzzing with a thousand farewells.
Whilst upstairs, solitude is present in absence. Black tears are illuminated by the light of forgetting.
The gardens conjure up wonderful memories; handkerchiefs in the wind welcome our tears.
What eyes your eyes are, distant, so distant, so distant in the darkness.
Joël Andrianomearisoa
LE PLI
FUNDAÇAO LEAL RIOS . LISBON . PORTUGAL
2018
Curator : Miguel Leal Rios
In this exhibition, Andrianomearisoa presents works that, in several ways, are declinations of the possibilities of constructing spatialities that, generated by a process of repetition, establish the several declinations of our lived space, which is anisotropic. In fact, this selection of large format pieces, and a sound work that reinforces the project’s spatial nature, proposes both an intensity based on repetition and a hapticity that emerges from the sensual sophistication of the rigorous choice of materials, from their achromatism, and from our craving to touch them.
Waiting for the seventh day that will bring us together in the rest hours of the night (2011) is a sculptural set composed of twenty-four elements on a wall, shaping a tension between its material (paper), its near-weightlessness and the massiveness created by repetition (the iteration of paper sheets). This tension is antinomic; repetition, mass and weightlessness op- pose in the creation of an interstitially that cuts across the entire exhibition.
© Bruno Lopes
LES SAISONS DE MON COEUR
SABRINA AMRANI GALLERY . MADRID . SPAIN
2017
For Les saisons de mon coeur, Andrianomearisoa has borrowed the title from a poem in the book Petals By Malagasy writer, poet and critic Elie-Charles Abraham, an activist of nostalgia certainly resented with his exile when he wrote this book of poems in 1940, which is divided in the seasons of the year. This book of poems, interestingly written in French during colonization of Madagascar, evoques with nostalgia Antananarivo under French occupation in poems that talk about seduction and sentimentality. In his texts Abraham portrays life like flower petals, delicate and everchanging with the seasons, reactive to darkness and to time.
Les saisons de mon coeur is divided in two parts: light and time. The first part of the exhibition holds recognizable textile works by Andrianomearisoa, which are an evolution from his series of silk paper works The Labyrinth of Passions. In this new body of work, Andrianomearisoa retains the technique of his labyrinths, with their repetition and their accidents, to create representations of the four seasons soaked in the essence of his practice. These works, painstakingly sewn by hand with strips of found sophisticated and regular textiles, are hung on a structure, as if they were paintings, connecting the upper and lower levels of the gallery, This structure, which reminds us of the artist’s education as an architect. appropriates of the gallery space and mutates it into a body furrowed with veins: the veins of life and of time, an announcement, that will transport us through landscapes of different horizons, in a promenade which is life itself, into the lower level of the gallery,where the second part of the show is revealed.
© Sabrina Amrani gallery
The second part of Les saisons de mon coeur will surprise those who know Andrianomearisoa’s practice. Just like in our own lives we have to break things and put ourselves out of our comfort zones to progress, the artist is exploring what happens in the space between l’aller et le retour. In the basement of the gallery Andrianomearisoa deploys with a new found language, the real seasons of his heart, the different periods of his life, reflections of personal times, becoming artwork through a new medium in the artist’s practice: the embrodery. The temporality of the embroderies allow for deep reflection during production, and connect with the metaphor of the seasons, while representing obsession and passion, in cue with Art Brut and artoutsider Jules Leclerq, who after having been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital, began collecting threads and pieces of cloth during his working hours in the laundry, to later compose complex and baroque embroideries in the insulation of his cell.
The fifty embroderies that compose the second part of Les saisons de mon coeur tell a story where time is treated like an everchanging line, like landscapes, a breathtaking sunset, the waves in the ocean or the snow on the mountain. But the surprise comes with the lively colors used to create these embroderies, which is a novelty in Andrianomearisoa’s practice. Very much like Allighiero e Boetti with his azzaris and mappas, Joël designed these works but handed over the process of selecting and combining the colors of the found threads to the embroiderers in his studio in Madagascar, forming an accidental aesthetic for each work.
Andrianomearisoa’s Les saisons de mon coeur is a depiction of the different beats of our hearts, a rendering of the writing of our own lifes, that calls upon being more felt than understood. He is telling a different story about his new life and work, the new materials he is using, in a new life found: the dead tree of his new life.
LE LA TOUR DU MONDE
GALERIES LAFAYETTE . PARIS . FRANCE
2017
Hosted by the Galeries Lafayette department store for Africa Now, Joël Andrianomearisoa presents a poetic whirlwind under the emporium’s dome.
Galeries Lafayette welcomes its customers to an impressive showcase, plunging them into an irrational, enchanting scene that provides a unique experience. The brand invites artists and creators to present original works in its store and under its dome to enhance and transform its architectural heritage.
The ‘world tower’ is made up of flags, accounts and words from Africa. But they are from a living, daring Africa, free of imagery. The project is structured as a poetic playground that encourages visitors to lose themselves in it.