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PARIS
December 8, 2023
Fondation H (Antananarivo, Madagascar) is dedicating the opening exhibition in its new space to Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo, known as Madame Zo (1956 -2020), an icon of the Madagascan art scene. The works of this exceptional weaver are characterized by unusual shapes and sizes and integrate several hundred varied materials. They form an important corpus of abstract works whose meshes contain meaningful details and word play that seem like an enigma to be deciphered, revealing a vision of Malagasy society and a poetic, socially-aware interpretation of the world.
Fondation H is publishing the very first book dedicated to Madame Zo. The catalog reproduces texts by Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Bérénice Saliou, co-curators of the exhibition named Bientôt je vous tisse tous (Soon I will weave you all), Alya Sebti and Hobisoa Raininoro, co-curators of the public program, as well as texts by Hemerson Andrianetrazafy, Dr. Sarah Fee, Dr. Bako Rasoarifetra, Rina Ralay-Ranaivo, over 80 works by the artist, poems by Na Hassi (Tonihasina Gaëlle Razafimahaleo) that enter into dialogue with Madame Zo's works, and several views of the Bientôt je tisse tous exhibition presented at the new space of Fondation H in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
CLICK HERE TO BUY THE CATALOGUE
Spaceshifting and spacemaking in Madame Zo’s weaving practice
by Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
To deliberate on the work of Madame Zo is to marvel at and unravel these universes woven by Madame Zo into a pluriverse, which the Zapatistas are known to have described as a world in which many worlds fit. The worlds that fit in Madame Zo’s pluriverse are made of threads of technologies, stories, medicines, tapes, woods and other found objects in her quotidian. Each thread is spun from the artist’s silent but deep encounter with the environment, with the people that surround her, with the impulses she gets from the cosmos.
To deliberate on the work of Madame Zo is to be deliberate in pushing the boundaries of what art can or must be. It is to be deliberate about blurring the boundary between craft and art, or indeed
completely tearing down whatever threshold society has created to separate art from craft, and honestly it is to be deliberate about weaving art and craft into a sophisticated mesh. It is to be deliberate in practicing narration through abstraction and continuing in the building of a genealogy of abstraction as a fundamental part of artistic expression and language at large within the African world.
To deliberate on the work of Madame Zo is to engage with art and an artist that is liberated. Liberated from the constraints of materiality: that is why she could weave with copper and wood, with bread and grass, with everything that crossed her path. Liberated from the constraints of subject matter: that is why she could touch on questions of nature, of totems, of texts, of physics, of medicine, of art history, of cinema, of listening, of story telling, of astrophysics, of spirituality, of politics, of personal search, of culture and of much more in her work without even labelling or sloganising these themes. (…)
This exhibition “Bientôt je vous tisse tous” can be seen as a retrospective because it brings together over 90 works of Madame Zo produced in different phases of her practice as an artist and artisan and spanning several decades. But this offering can also be understood as a retrospection, which is to say a possibility of looking back at Madame Zo’s work, and engaging in a possibility of (re-)contextualising and (re-)situating the work. To look is not to see.
In researching on Madame Zo’s work one might have the impression that many have looked at her work, but very few have seen her work. Seeing as in experiencing the work. Seeing as in doing an “Auseinadersetzung” with the work. Her work can obviously be read from the surface, but like with every poetic practice, it demands for the beholder to spend time with it. It calls for the viewer to engage all their senses in experiencing the work. It asks for us to dig deep, to unearth, to rummage at the crux — indeed it calls for profundity. “Bientôt je vous tisse tous” will be an exhibition that holds space and invites people to engage with the practices and philosophies the Madame Zo cultivated over several decades. (…) It wouldn’t be a hyperbole to state that Madame Zo is a writer, a narrator, a story teller, an orator. In her practice is grounded the notion of what Haitians call oraliture: a way of telling not restricted to the written script but employing other scripts like weaving, orality, and otherwise. (…)
The exhibition “Bientôt je vous tisse tous” takes its title from the last letter Madame Zo sent to the Fondation H’s director Hassanein Hiridjee and the jury of the Prix Paritana when she was accorded the prize. The title speaks of a social weaving and social healing that were integral parts of her work. That people from different disciplines, geographies, concerns come together to weave together the art works of Madame Zo in an exhibition, to spin a public programme in her honour, to host a residency of artists around her practice, or just to deliberate on her work as a craftsperson and artist, as a philosopher and healer is a manifestation of what she wrote: “Bientôt je vous tisse tous.”
“Bientôt je vous tisse tous” is almost a promise of the supernatural, or a hint of the transition she was about to make to the greater beyond. A migration to that only place where one has the possibility of weaving all of us.
« Bientôt je vous tisse tous” is an exhibition that tries to shed light on the plenitude of tracjectories that Madame Zo explored in her life time and passes down to us all. The trajectories include but care not limited to her interests in art history; her exploration of the depths of the black hole; her narrations using the film tapes as material in what she called Cinetiss; her geometric, oblong, and abstract constellations; her interest in gender questions; her engagement with light phenomena; her quest and questioning of nature; her translation languages, narrations (oraliture), writings (literature) into textiles; her imaginations of landscapes; her personal and societal inquiries, her cogitations of
materiality and physicality of objects; her pursuit of a deeper understanding of spirituality beyond religion; her investigations in the realm of technologies, and her embarking on a never ending transition. “Bientôt je vous tisse tous” is an effort to understand spacemaking and shapeshifting in Madame Zo’s (Razakaratrimo Zoarinivo) weaving practice.
Fils Conducteurs
by Bérénice Saliou
How many women artists have been swallowed up by the floodwaters of an essentially masculine, European-centric art history? No one will ever know, despite an awareness of the need to “place women artists on an equal footing with their male counterparts” and the patient research, even excavation work of researchers, historians, artists and curators of both sexes. Zoarinovo Razakaratrimo, known as Madame Zo (1956 - 2020) was a pioneer in Madagascar. Through her abstract, experimental works which freed her from the limitations of the loom to embrace monumentality and entropy, the artist revolutionized the art of weaving and transformed the face of the Malagasy art scene. Even so, and despite her participation in international group exhibitions, her immense body of work, inspired as much by the tumult of the world as the vibration of energies, remains largely unknown beyond the Grande-Île.
Madame Zo sought to reinvent traditional Malagasy weaving by deconstructing it. In 2012, she sets out on a two-month journey by van along national road 7 (RN7). From Antananarivo to Antsirabe, she weaves anything she comes across along her way: leeks, breads, cutlery which she finds and buys at the market, and immediately transforms and exhibits by making use of ingenious modular display devices that she installs on sidewalks, in markets... This was her way of reaching out to the people and engaging in discussions on the status of art. Later, she embarks on a major social, economic and environmental development project in rural areas, including components on planting, production, children’s schooling, documentation, care, training, processing and marketing chain, with the aim of promoting local know-how and bringing about a deep transformation in Malagasy society.
Bientôt je vous tisse tous brings Madame Zo’s spirit to life, making her quest for emancipation palpable. Her works – which framing is out of question – float in space like banners that are freed from their poles or kites that no hand is holding up. They converse and circulate, giving forth flashes of light, opening up the abysses of blinding depths, vibrating with the passage of cosmic energies and the souls of ancestors, releasing messages that can be deciphered in enigmas and offering infinite prospects for contemplation and interpretation.
Madame Zo was a woman of few words, but her works speak volumes. And it is no coincidence that her autobiographical woven work named “Mon métier” is composed of hacksaws. If “a witch embodies a woman freed from all dominations, all limitations; an ideal to strive for and which shows the way”, then Madame Zo was a witch. Once a wish, a promise and a prophecy, one of her last messages was: “Soon I’ll weave you all...”.
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