Figures

The Palais de Tokyo has entrusted the space of the great glass roof to the artist Malala Andrialavidrazana. Born in Madagascar in 1971, Malala Andrialavidrazana has been exhibiting her ‘Figures’ around the world since 2015. These digital photomontages are based on iconographic archives mostly inherited from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, in particular maps, and refer to the imagery of modernity: the expansion of industrial capitalism, the birth of globalisation in its relation to colonisation, the accelerated circulation of goods and images, and the extraction of natural resources. This monumental work of almost sixty metres long and five meters high exhibited on a curved wall combines several images from this series in a sort of cross-fade, and constitutes her first solo exhibition in a public institution in Paris.

‘In what she sees as both an urgency and a need to slow down the ways in which images are read, she intends to take part in an elucidation of the present, to ‘retrace the movements of this world with archives’ in order to ‘confront us with the writing of our own history’,’ writes François Piron, curator of the exhibition.

The book, which is both an exhibition catalogue and a monograph devoted to the ‘Figures’ series, reproduces a vast selection of the works in this series (thirty pieces), as well as a dozen images produced as part of the same project, and numerous preparatory documents showing the process of creating the fresco. This iconographic corpus will be accompanied by texts by François Piron, Yves Chatap, Missla Libsekal and Olivier Zeitoun, as well as an interview of the artist with Dominique Malaquais (1964-2021), historian and critic of contemporary African art. 

This book was published with the kind support of the Fonds Yavarhoussen.