We arrive at the first work of the exhibition by Madame Zo. You will encounter other works by her later on, and on the third floor, a larger collection of pieces.
Zoarinivo Razakatrimo, known as Madame Zo, was born in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, in 1960, and passed away in 2020 due to COVID-19. She developed a unique weaving technique, combining unconventional materials with the Malagasy tradition of lamba – fabric made from raw silk or cotton. Often, the artist built her own looms, which allowed her to incorporate unusual elements: wood, spices, bean pods, medicinal plants, bones, magnetic tapes, headphones, copper wire, various metals, and countless other objects. When weaving, nothing seemed able to contain her creative drive.
The works spread across different points of the pavilion form fields of intensity, where weaves and varied materials alternate in scale, density, and luminosity. Some compositions appear as contained, compact surfaces, while others reach monumental proportions, expanding over large areas and allowing light to pass through their threads. Visitors perceive contrasts between opacity and brightness, between finely woven details and broad forms, creating an irregular and dynamic rhythm within the shared space.
Among them, Untitled (2016) combines black and reddish-copper threads that undulate softly, letting light through and evoking a delicate vibration, on a surface measuring 2.60 m wide by 1.85 m high. In Le bateau [The Boat] (2018), long strips of 16 mm film, in dark and translucent tones, intertwine with raw cotton and black thread, creating strong contrasts between illuminated and shaded areas across a surface measuring 2.10 m high by 1.10 m wide. In Untitled 3 (2019), newspapers woven into continuous lines expand into a large-scale piece – 4.36 m wide by 65 cm high – condensing printed fragments and memories into a continuous surface.
These works do not form a linear narrative, but rather open compositions that invite the eye and body to traverse them, in dialogue with the architecture and the Bienal as a whole. Their production creates passages and transitional spaces between different states: between here and another place. The notion of aina – the breath of life present in the silkworm, according to Malagasy tradition – animates these creations, which escape direct figuration and materiality to address themes such as nature, sociopolitical relations, totems, medicine, the search for the self, image, and cinema – without reducing them to labels.
Each object seems to gain its own life. Some, with their cassette tapes, suggest stories recorded in fragments, like frames suspended in the time of the work, never fully revealed. Her work approaches the idea of storytelling, of oral literature, or of escrevivência – a concept formulated by Conceição Evaristo to designate writing that emerges from lived experience. Tradition plays a fundamental role in her practice, and Madame Zo also passed on her weaving knowledge to her son.
As Billy Fowo writes in the catalog of the 36th Bienal: “The copper, which appears prominently in her works, can be read as a reference to communication technologies, but also to healing, due to its ability to conduct energies – what Bonaventure Ndikung called the ‘technical-spiritual’ aspects of copper in a text on Madame Zo’s works.”