MALALA ANDRIALAVIDRAZANA


    FR/

    Malala Andrialavidrazana (vit et travaille à Paris, France) fait du voyage et des rencontres un mode de recherche permanent. Depuis le début des années 1990, l'artiste développe une étude de type anthropologique liée aux rituels et à la mémoire. Elle s'intéresse aux typologies des espaces funéraires malgaches. L'architecture fait partie intégrante de sa formation visuelle et conceptuelle : l'habitat, sous toutes ses formes, reflète le fonctionnement d'une personne, d'une famille, d'une société. Les œuvres d'Andrialavidrazana génèrent des mouvements entre l'individu et le collectif.

    La série récente, Figures, est l'une de ses œuvres les plus complexes sur le plan conceptuel et contextuel. Elle prend les cartes comme point de départ pour discuter des nombreuses permutations de la mondialisation au XIXe siècle, l'époque de la construction des empires. En utilisant une méthodologie qui combine la photographie, le collage, le dessin et le texte, il en résulte une narration picturale du mouvement, de l'espace et de la connectivité. Par le biais du processus de collecte, de collage et de réutilisation des objets, des symboles, des images et de l'écriture, l'œuvre parle de nos identités en tant qu'individus mais aussi du processus de construction de la nation.

    Ses œuvres ont été largement exposées, pour n'en citer que quelques-unes : Fondation Donwahi, Lagos Photo Festival ; Biennales de Changjiang et Karachi, Dhaka Art Summit, PAC Milano, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Lyon et la Biennale d'Irlande EVA, MoMA de Varsovie, en Europe ; Fondation Clément dans les Caraïbes ; Aperture, Art Institute of Chicago, Ford Foundation, aux États-Unis.

    Plus récemment, elle a exposé à la Fondation Boghossian à Bruxelles, et dans l'exposition en cours Global(e) Resistance au Centre Pompidou à Paris.

     

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    ENG/

    A South African artist (1971) living in Paris and a photographer by training, I began my research by building many large scale models, using different mediums, which I then photographed. More recently, the practice of ceramics has allowed me to make my models into full-fledged works and no longer a photographic medium. This material, so concrete, so noble and so fragile, has no equal to express the precarious beauty of our existence.

    I approach the theme of the "Memento Mori" with a series of human skulls in the tradition of vanities and still lifes. Each piece becomes the support of a unique universe, shown or secretly hidden inside the skulls, representing the particular imaginary world of each one.

    My latest works are large-format installations that translate my questioning about our relationship to the world and to nature, at this time in the history of humanity when our activity threatens our environment. They confront us with a post-human world, still haunted by the architectural ruins of abandoned cities, the ultimate evocation of the history of our civilizations, still cluttered with the polluting waste of our devouring consumer societies, but where animal and plant nature is taking back its rights.

    A kind of appeased naturalist resurrection but also a worried warning about the future of our society.

    Vivian Van Blerk

    Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

    Malala Andrialavidrazana (lives and works in Paris, France) makes travel and encounters a permanent mode of research. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the artist has been developing an anthropological type of study related to rituals and memory. She examines the typologies of Malagasy funeral spaces. Architecture is an integral part of her visual and conceptual training.The habitat, in all its forms, reflects the functioning of a person, a family, a society. Andrialavidrazana’s works generate movements between the individual and the collective.

    The recent series, Figures, is one of her most conceptually and contextually complex works. She takes maps as the starting point to discuss the many permutations of globalization in the 19th century, the age of empire building. Employing a methodology that combines photography, collage, drawing and text, this results in a pictorial narrative of movement, space and connectivity.Through the process of collecting, collating and repurposing objects, symbols, images and writing the work speaks to our identities as individuals but also to the process of nation building.

    Her works have been widely exhibited.To name some: Donwahi Foundation, Lagos Photo Festival; Changjiang and Karachi biennials, Dhaka Art Summit, PAC Milano, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Lyon and EVA Ireland’s Biennial, Warsaw MoMA, in Europe; Fondation Clément in the Caribbean; Aperture, Art Institute of Chicago, Ford Foundation, in the US.

    More recently, she exhibited at Boghossian Foundation in Brussels, and in the ongoing exhibition Global(e) Resistance at Centre Pompidou in Paris.