PARIS
DECEMBER 18 - JANUARY 18, 2025
Tsiriniaina Hajatiana Irimboangy, winner of Prix Paritana 2024, is benefiting from a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where they are developing their project Ridô – Dévoiler les souvenirs [ Ridô - Revealing memories] for which the jury congratulated them. Their research will be exhibited at the Parisian space of Fondation H from December 18 to January 18, 2025, and later presented at the Institut Français de Madagascar from March 17 to April 19, 2025.
A graduate of the Master's program in Design, Creation, Project, and Transdisciplinarity at ENSAAMA in Paris, Tsiriniaina is now an artist-designer and researcher. They also consider themself as a visual storyteller, dedicated to narrating silent and overlooked stories—those on the margins of the grand narratives typically found in collective imagination. By employing various digital creation technologies, Tsiriniaina explores new artistic and creative pathways. Their approach aims to highlight, preserve, and give voice to Malagasy heritage and culture through a transmedia lens.
For Prix Paritana 2024, Tsiriniaina's project Ridô – revealing memories takes shape as a series of multimedia installations. The central element of these installations is the ridô [curtains] a reference of those in their grandparents’ home. For Tsiriniaina, these curtains are living witnesses of childhood memories, simultaneously concealing and revealing. They serve as objects that bear traces of different stories and transitions, offering glimpses into the windows of memory. In their process of reminiscence, Tsiriniaina is guided by narrative writing. Instinctively, they compose fragments of memories connected to the home gasy [Malagasy home]. Immersed in their childhood in Madagascar, images resurface: objects such as their grandfather’s talisman or the Virgin Mary altar that safeguarded their home. They also recall cherished moments, like shared family meals and their parents’ vodiondry, the Malagasy equivalent of engagement ceremonies. Tsiriniaina’s evocative texts enable them to generate images using artificial intelligence, which they explore to establish a sense of visual distance. These vaporous and phantasmagoric images, referred to by the artist as “veiled images,” offer a blurred interpretation of their memories. Accompanied by audio recordings in which Tsiriniaina recites their texts, these visuals gain a sound dimension, enriching the exploration of memory and perception.
At the end of the journey, the artist invites the audience into an immersive experience at the heart of their grandparents’ living room. A three-dimensional capture of the space is accompanied by the voice of their grandmother, delivering her final blessings, called tso-drano (breath of water), before Tsiriniaina’s departure for France three years ago. This video reflects on what is left behind when one leaves the family home and what endures beyond memories.