Born in 1977 in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Joël Andrianomearisoa lives and works between Paris and Antananarivo. He obtained a degree in architecture from the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris in 2003. Embracing a large variety of mediums, including installation, drawing, craft, textile, performance, video and photography, his work investigates the materiality of emotions. Driven by his strong interest in human relationships, the artist expresses feelings through matter, textures, forms and atmospheres. Mixing traditional know-how and craftmanship with the sentimentalism of the digital age, his work reintroduces poetry and sentimentality in minimalist tradition. An artist of his time, he considers his work as ongoing exercises, constantly extracting all the possibilities of textiles, silk paper, glass, flowers, and a variety of objects such as mirrors, to create a multi-faceted, polyphonic oeuvre.
Read MoreKnown in particular for his monumental installations, such as _I Have Forgotten the Night _at the Venice Biennale in 2019 or _Brise du rouge soleil _on the tower and ramparts of Aigues-Mortes in 2020, Joël Andrianomearisoa probes the emotional possibilities of urban space. At once imposing and fragile, monumental and meticulous, his work draws from Malagasy multiculturalism and tradition. Interested in the notion of non-geography, emblematic of the culturally diverse influences of Madagascar, Andrianomearisoa explores the universality of human experiences through complex, often abstract narrations.
In 2019, Joël Andrianomearisoa represented the first-ever Madagascar Pavilion at the 58th Venice Art Biennale. His work has been exhibited in leading global institutions including MAXXI, Rome (2018); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010); the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC (2015) and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2005) and more recently at the Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town ; the MACAAL, Marrakech (2022) and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021). His work forms part of important international collections including the Smithsonian (Washington DC), The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), and the Museum Sztuki (Łódź). Joël Andrianomearisoa is also the founder and artistic director of Hakanto Contemporary, a non-profit independent space for artists in Antananarivo, Madagascar supported by the Fonds Yavarhoussen.
— Jérôme Sans
Text courtesy Almine Rech.
