Joël Andrianomearisoa explores the most fragile and intimate aspects of language: silence, absence and restraint. Working across the mediums of installation, collage, textiles and works on paper, Andrianomearisoa constructs a visual form of writing in which words are more often suggested than stated and appear in a fragmentary form rather than being clearly formulated. Language is a trace, a breath of energy, or a feeling of tension.

In his art, poetry is more a structure than a genre. His works are like incomplete sentences, letters that have never been sent and unfinished stories. The omnipresent coulour black is a surface on which something can be projected, a space where meaning can be found as much in terms of what is absent as in an actual presence. This economy of means bestows a unique density on his use of language: every sign counts and every absence is significant.

Andrianomearisoa maintains close ties with literature and poetry in his work, notably texts that, rather than following a linear narrative, give pride of place to emotion, rhythm and fragmentation. Language is never descriptive; it is experienced, felt and often full of contradictory emotions—desire, melancholy and expectation.

By making language a place of restraint and sensitivity, Andrianomearisoa develops a body of work in which silence speaks as loud as words, reminding us that language is also manifest in what is left unsaid. His work puts poetry at the heart of contemporary art, an example of an intense and yet gentle way of living in this world.