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“The idea is to imagine another world, I don't know if it's better or not, but it's imagined from Ouidah” 

For Joël Andrianomearisoa, it's fundamental that each piece he creates is directly linked to its surrounding environment. From his earliest creations, he has always sought to integrate local know-how, to nourish his art with the ideas and materials he finds around him. Andrianomearisoa's work is the fruit of constant dialogue: with craftsmen, artists and the places he takes possession of. Like a writer, he creates units of time, place and action, and with the freedom of a poet, he invents units of emotion, melancholy and complicity. This anchoring allows him to give meaning to his work, to place it in a context that is at once local, intimate and universal.

Benin has always been a territory of experimentation for him. The trust of conversations means that the only limits are those of the imagination. The diversity of local know-how, the production opportunities on unconstrained scales, the very direct relationship with the public, all contribute to creative freedom. The Foundation offers the formal framework of a museum, but also thousands of ways to escape it: in a flexible space like the LAB or a unique territory such as the Jardin d'Essai, each enables us to think on a different scale.

In the meandering streets of Dantokpa, along the aisles of the craft center or at the Cococodji market, the artist takes a stroll. But not just as a stroller. The search is constant. Inspiration can come from anywhere, as it is directly linked to the geography of emotions... His gaze stops on a color, a shape, a leaf, an object that might seem contingent, ordinary and mundane at best. He asks the people around him how it’s used, what techniques and materials it’s associated with. He talks to the artisan, seeks to understand the manufacturing process, the gesture. Is this an object that speaks to everyone? What does it evoke? In what circumstances do people use it? Is it intimate? a representation? He seeks to understand it completely: its form, practice and history. He exhausts its definition. Then comes the time of transcendence, when the indigent object becomes a work of art. Infinite multiplications of slabs of clay or mica become masterful installations, citrus leaves a constellation, a pair of heels the evocation of a woman who always promises but never appears... 

Everything here is familiar: pottery from Sè, local Sodabi alcohol, a citrus fruit holder like the ones you see on the roadside stalls of the orange sellers, the smell of teak leaves crackling in the dry season, palm trees that punctuate the landscape... Visitors can't help but be touched by these narrative  elements they know so intimately. This language, which the artist invents before their very eyes, is his own. The rigorous lines of the display resemble the intimate notebooks where visitors will leave a trace of their emotions. 

 

Let's step into the Ouidah Museum...

 

Promises echo first and foremost in a given place: this Afro-Brazilian house built in 1922 by masons returning from forced exile in Salvador de Bahia. Designed two that the wind could pass through the rooms and mitigate the sometimes trying heat. Windows and doors, so numerous and complicated to deal with in the formal world of the museum, become an integral part of the work in this instance. The wind rushes in, and the air passes through the works, carrying the fumes of palm alcohol or the scent of sun-dried teak leaves from the Ouidah garden, rustling the silk paper leaves of the Labyrinthe des Promesses, or creating a delicate, irregular movement of citrus leaves. The works give new life to the Villa Ajavon, which in turn breathes life into them.

 

The first three pieces in the museum introduce the promise that the artist made when developing the exhibition: a promise to nature. A promise born of a dialogue around the Jardin d'Essai (which served as the setting for the Last Kiss sculpture installed in 2017), its botanical, historical and climatic aspects, which all touch on the major issues of the contemporary world and evoke the challenges facing the African continent. 

When in the LAB, viewers are confronted with a new exhibition using the known formal vocabulary of the artist; at the Museum in Ouidah, Joël Andrianomearisoa breaks the mould. The introduction of plants represents a disruptive and disconcerting departure. The palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, native to West Africa, becomes a medium. From trunk to foliage, from floor to ceiling, from materiality to essence, it becomes a new means of expression. In an inaccessible room, at the foot of a silver wall, whose noble appearance contrasts with the modesty of the material, the windows open onto an immense installation of bottles of Sodabi, the palm alcohol whose fragrance seizes the visitor and carries him off into an imaginary and poetic intoxication. 

 

This introduction, in a room than cannot be entered, sets the tone for the relationship between the artist, the work and the public. Joël Andrianomearisoa doesn't see the public as a silent witness to his work; he turns viewers into actors. Through their eyes, their sense of smell, their imagination and their feelings, they activate the installations they are seeing. The closed door is not a symbol of exclusion, but a window onto the Promesse de l’ivresse, a way of showing a different path, like an encouragement from the artist to the public to take his work and make it their own. The viewer then understands that he or she is part of the work…

 

The next door is open. Here the wind itself seems to be born from the palm tree, in an installation made up of 373 fans, framed by a window that gives a glimpse of everyday street life. This change of perspective introduces the idea that another perception of the world is possible, as if to metaphorically imply that what surrounds us depends solely on our own gaze. It arouses curiosity about the rest of the journey. The wind blowing through the room randomly agitates the threads unwinding from black reels, a reiteration of one of the artist's historic installations in Antananarivo, a subtle evocation of Madagascar.

 

The Imaginary Cartographies, majestically displayed in Cotonou, also appear in the museum. In formats ranging from miniatures to large scale canvases, these oil paintings are an invitation from the artist to the viewers, encouraging them to find meaning according to their own desires or emotions. Some will see echoes of palm leaves, others maps of a dream geography, others still abstract calligraphy. Surprising visitors along the way, they weave a link between the rooms, but they also place the exhibition in the continuity of those that preceded it, from Marrakech to Berlin or Paris.

The last direct confrontation with palms comes in the form of a spectacular bouquet. A plant construction overflowing from an earthen vase; the same earth where palm trees take root. But here the earth is fixed in a pot made by the women of Sè, and the palms that have fallen from the tree and dried out are long dead. This could be all there is to it: dead plants in the half-light of a black niche. Yet here nature comes back to life. In the movement imparted by the artist, the palms catch the light, change condition and mutate into a piece that resonates with nature's primal promise, as described by Greek philosopher Anaxagoras of Philomena, “Nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are”.

From the promise of nature to the promise of the earth... The earth that produces plants is the same earth we dig up to burrow, shovel and bury. Although it holds a promise of life, it is also the repository for death. It is a witness to our every step, and the memory of all those who have gone before us. 

From the complexity of the earth comes a more fragile, more intimate promise, with melancholy and sometimes dramatic undertones. As the viewer climbs to the second floor, the breeze through the corridors becomes stronger, drawing him towards new horizons. 

At first glance, the bright color of Alexandre Gourçon's Rayons might evoke a comforting sun, but the folds and creases of the textile, fashioned by the artist, create shadows we can't ignore. What promise has he made to Joël Andrianomearisoa? While we can guess that it was born in the soil of Ouidah, which gave life to the mango leaves and turmeric roots that give the percale its golden tint, we don't know what it is. The screen hides as much as it exposes, giving rise to an ambiguity, a doubt, about what the art reveals and what it hides within. 

This same uncertainty tinges the Labyrinthe des Passions in black, dramatic sheets of tissue paper where the ink overwhelms the writing, leaving us alone with our own thoughts. Does the work offer a mirror for our own drama? Is it an evocation of Venetian nights? An homage to lost writers? A Malagasy melancholy around the dream architecture of the Ilafy Palace?

 

The work isn’t there for contemplation only, viewers can pass through it, listen to it. The wind flowing into the room rustles the leaves like a whisper. It seems to respond to the mix of piano and Zahra Rabeharisoa's voice, which can be heard through the open windows. At this precise moment, the viewer understands the musicality of Joël Andrianomearisoa's work, and as he wanders through the rooms of the museum once again, the millimeter-perfect hangings seem to morph into the staves of a score, the citrus leaves into fly away notes, and the Iarivo chairs, silences. 

 

A breath stirs the crackling teak leaves. Is this sound reminiscent of the initiate's footsteps as he enters the sacred forest, or does it evoke the end of the dry season, when the wind carries with it the traces of an imaginary autumn - a season that doesn't exist in our geography, but which the artist takes the liberty of invoking to conjure up new emotions?

 

Artist, writer, composer, poet: Joël Andrianomearisoa plays with definitions. His art never confines him. Part of a world without borders or limits, he shares with people, speaks to them, surrounds himself, encourages, values and draws from others just as much as he brings to them. “I” is often replaced by ‘We’. Never the royal we, always one of complicity. PROMESSE is no exception. In the conversation leading up to the exhibition, invitations were extended. Clotilde Courau, Alexandre Gourçon, Zahra Rabeharisoa, Jeremy Demester, Nobel Koty, Ishola Akpo - these are just some of the people with whom we have forged bonds. From long-standing friendships to new ones, promises have been made on both sides, stories have been created. The emulation of these unexpected dialogues built new promises, introducing into the Museum the tension, fragility and beauty inherent to human relationships. 

The artist has close ties with Alexandre Gourçon and Zahra Rabeharisoa, and has long followed the work of Ishola Akpo, an artist he knows well. Yet these familiar figures were not the ones he turned to to bring to life the project's most intimate promises. To mold his heart and paint his self-portrait, he turned instead to the “unknown”: choosing Jeremy Demester and Nobel Koty, with whom conversations were more recent. At the last minute, just before the opening, he chose to look at the pieces created by these artists, preserving the surprise effect of the discovery, as if the promise no longer belonged to him; he placed his full trust in them. At the heart of the museum, Joël Andrianomearisoa chooses to place his own being at the center of the project. Is it because, as an internationally renowned artist, constantly engaged in creation, these artist friends finally offer him the opportunity to reconnect with himself, to create a breath of fresh air in his own life? Or is it because offering his own identity and intimacy as inspiration enables him to connect to the world, and to its universality?

Facing a silver altar, as if in the secrecy of a confessional, viewers discover the beginnings of the third act of the exhibition: the promise of the future. It's time for them to put pen to paper and write what they hope for, what drives them, what they promise themselves, what they promise us. The sheet of white paper, once it has been covered in writing, is folded and inserted into one of the 49 sealed metal boxes that make up the installation. This is the gift the artist is giving the Fondation to celebrate its 20th anniversary as well as the years to come. The protocol states that they will be opened in 10 years' time.


Then it's time to go to the Jardin d’Essai...

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