jet hair, crisp black jacket and pants. Only the plastic surgeon’s sneakers let out touches of yellow and gray. His style is in the image of his works: graphic and in duality. “Black is never linear. One can imagine that I use this non-color in reference to the dark continent, but Africa is much more colorful than you think. We already find different skin tones there, just as we find different blacks in my works, ”analyzes the 43-year-old artist, a cigarette in his hand. Newly arrived from Madagascar for a project still kept secret, Joël Andrianomearisoa receives us in his Parisian workshop, where he partly designed the works of the exhibition “We were so very much in love” for the Roger art museum. Quilliot (Marq) from Clermont-Ferrand.
“An exhibition that no one will be able to see! »He regrets. But there is no question for the man in black to be discouraged by the context of a global pandemic, which is forcing European museums to close their doors. “This exhibition exists, that’s what matters. Going to museums is an act of resistance, ”he claims. Beside it sits a model of a bouquet of flowers painted in black, the original work of which was donated to the Clermont area. We come back to it. The shades of black are spread over all of his creations, but the light is never far away. It is found in plays of materials, contrasts, superimpositions of layers and, by accident, on fabrics recovered from the markets of Madagascar or from the weavers of bogolan in Mali.
An artistic universe in its own right
Some curators like to see in the use of this pigment a symbol of the beauty dear to the Red Island. An interpretation that Joël Andrianomerisoa enjoys. “When you are an African artist, we like to put you in boxes and find you codes specific to your territory. However, when you look at my works, if the references to Madagascar exist, they are not immediately perceptible. “For him, black is above all universal. “Export me to the end of everything; There is no geography; The only borders are those of the heart, ”he recites. These aphorisms flanked on cards, tote bags and canvases summarize the approach of one who exhibits both in international capitals and in the provinces “without snobbery or contempt”.
If Joël Andrianomerisoa represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 2019, he does not make it a standard. “The partitioning of territories and domains does not interest me. I think we have to put an end to that, ”protests the one who has above all won the recognition of the profession. And nothing has been denied since, not even the creation of a luxury bag ordered by the French label Dior. Trained architect, designer, entrepreneur, art producer… “What sums up a contemporary art artist is this freedom to have a look at everything”, he believes.
Textile works
It is therefore natural that the native of Antananarivo agreed to invest in a museum of fine arts essentially reserved for European works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.e century. The means for him to express his daring by disseminating several shrouds within the permanent collection. One of his textile pieces can be found in the middle of the Cordeliers sepulcher dating from 1465. “The funeral tradition of turning the dead in Madagascar has been highlighted to satisfy the curiosity of tourists. I rather like to think that the shroud represents the eternal, because the fabric accompanies us from birth until death ”, analyzes this researcher of materiality, as he likes to define himself. This follower of large-scale creations made collectively has also refocused on the essential by picking up his pencil. The confinement period of March 2020 has led him to return to the handmade. A series of poetic drawings is thus revealed within the walls of the Marq.
Joël Andrianomerisoa hopes to rethink this exhibition for Dakar, where the International Festival of Extraordinary Textiles will be held in November 2021. The opportunity for him to present a third monograph on the continent, after the Dakar Biennale and the Zinsou Foundation in Cotonou, Benin. “Africa lends itself to the grandiose. For an artist, exhibiting there makes dreams come true, because if you work with weavers, for example, a whole neighborhood is in turmoil, ”he projects.
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