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.