Figures, Malala Andrialavidrazana

Malala Andrialavidrazana (born 1971 in Madagascar) is a visual artist trained in architecture whose work is based on the notions of barriers and interactions in intercultural contexts. Whether it is his series " from Beyond the World", focusing on funeral customs on the edge of nature and culture, or his project “Echoes (from Indian Ocean)” on the daily life of a specific region, the Indian Ocean, Malala Andrialavidrazana, thanks to a succession of back and forth between private spaces and global issues, explores social imaginaries, mainly through photography. The The “Figures” series, initiated in 2015, is structured from obsolete maps from the 19th century that the artist juxtaposes with elements taken from archives of various countries (stamps, banknotes, postcards, etc.). These items, once reworked, allow him to question history and received ideas in order to better deconstruct the stereotypes spread by these same cards. Malala Andrialavidrazana diverts these images, initially political tools and ideological, to give birth to a new discourse and show that it There are several possibilities for interpreting the stories that are written and broadcast. through the documents. As part of his exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, From mid-October 2024 to mid-January 2025, Malala Andrialavidrazana will present a fresco created for the occasion, offering a reinterpretation of this series “Figures ", 60 meters long and presented on the curved wall of the ground floor of the museum, this fresco, which is echoed in a first version presented at the Sharjah Biennale 2023, combines several images from this series “Figures "in a kind of fade-in. The book, exhibition catalogue and monograph dedicated to the series “Figures”, emblematic of the work of the artist will reproduce all of the works in the “Figures” series (30 pieces as well as around ten images produced as part of this same project) and numerous preparatory documents showing the process of creation of the fresco. This iconographic corpus will be accompanied by a text by the curator exhibition by François Piron, as well as three texts: one by Yves Chatap, one another by Missia Libseka and an interview between the artist and Dominique Malaquais (1964-2021), historian and critic of contemporary African art.