Conjugations – Talk with Hobisoa Raininoro, Myriam Omar Awadi and Sumesh Sharma – Fondation H
On September 6, as part of Conjugations, the public program of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, which aims to bring together institutions from around the world to conjoin, explore, and collectively celebrate humanity, the participation of Fondation H will take place. The event will be held from 3 pm to 4 pm at the work of Myriam Omar Awadi, right after her performance activating the installation, on the second floor.
The proposal draws on the textile tradition of the Indian Ocean, especially the works of Malagasy artist Madame Zo, who reinvents the lamba (the traditional fabric of Madagascar), and seeks to expand it in dialogue with other practices and artists. The program proposes workshops, performances, and encounters that approach textiles as an aesthetic, political, and social language, a metaphor of memory, resistance, and coexistence.
Prior to the event, textiles from the Indian Ocean will be distributed to the public. In these cultures, the gift of a textile is a gesture full of meaning. They are a mark of respect, recognition, blessing, or diplomacy.
This gesture will be followed by a series of three conversations: the first, with Hobisoa Raininoro, contextualizes textiles as vehicles of memory for the peoples of the Indian Ocean, focusing on a case study of the importance of the lamba in Madagascar. The second, with Myriam Omar Awadi, discusses the presentation of her installation-performance. The third, with Sumesh Sharma, reflects on the work of Myriam Omar Awadi and on postcolonial and diasporic trajectories in contemporary artistic practices.
[galeria]
Hobisoa Raininoro is a curator, cultural programmer, and activist in the field of visual arts in Madagascar. She is the founder and executive director of the Association of Cultural Mediators and the Resource Center for Contemporary Arts of Madagascar (CRAAM), which operates on the campus of the University of Antananarivo with the goal of democratizing access to culture and strengthening the local art scene, and she is also a curator at Fondation H.
Myriam Omar Awadi (1983, Paris. Lives in Le Tampon, Réunion) is a Franco-Comorian artist. Awadi’s work gives voice to narratives that are often unheard, seeking the sparks reignited by their final breaths. Millions of souls and species, crafted from wood, clay, glass, embroidery, shimmering sequins, and seawater, drip onto microphones and awaken from their premeditated extinctions through the sweat of our deviant listening.
Sumesh Sharma is a curator based in Mumbai who co-founded the Clark House Initiative in 2010, a curatorial collaborative project located in an old office of the Thakur Shipping Company, which seeks to address the freedom that “you don’t yet know you don’t have.” His interests include alternate art histories and projects informed by socio-economics and politics that often include cultural perspectives, immigrant culture in the Francophone, vernacular equalities, and movements of black consciousness in culture.
Fondation H is a Malagasy contemporary art foundation founded in Antananarivo in 2017 on the initiative of entrepreneur and patron Hassanein Hiridjee, who believed that art and culture have a strong social impact and enable a critical opening to the world. It has been recognized as a public utility since 2018. It operates programs dedicated to supporting artists from Africa and its diasporas in their careers, facilitates public access to art, and actively participates in the development and structuring of the art scene in the Indian Ocean.
Service
Conjugations – Talk with Hobisoa Raininoro, Myriam Omar Awadi and Sumesh Sharma – Fondation H
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
September 6, 2025
Saturday, 2:30 pm
Invocations space
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion
Ibirapuera Park, gate 3
Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/n
São Paulo, SP
free admission
