Joël Andrianomearisoa

This neon piece is inpired in the arworks made for ‘Last Year in Antananarivo’, a series of photographs of a ball held by the French colonials in 1900 in Antananarivo which Andrianomearisoa found in FTM archives in Madagascar. This discovery set the artist on a journey, exploring the relationship between memory, pain and identity. In the images the Malagasy are dressed by the French in elaborate costumes to reflect the colonialists’ idea of a ‘civilised’ people. Andrianomearisoa plays on the inherent duality – the colonized and the colonizer, the past versus the present, pain and pleasure, the subjectivity of identity and the notion of ‘civilisation’. This is the first time Andrianomearisoa reflects directly on his Madagascan heritage.