Malala Andrialavidrazana - Figures

Exhibition Catalogue Malala Andrialavidrazana. Figures, presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (17 October 2024 - 5 January 2025).

This catalogue is devoted to the eponymous series of photomontages by the artist Malala Andrialavidrazana, shown as part of her exhibition ‘Figures’ at the Palais de Tokyo.

The ‘Figures’ series, begun in 2015, is based on obsolete 19th-century maps that the artist juxtaposes with elements taken from the archives of various countries (stamps, banknotes, postcards, etc.). Once these elements have been reworked, she questions history and received ideas in order to deconstruct the stereotypes disseminated by these same maps.

Malala Andrialavidrazana uses these images, which were initially political and ideological tools, to create a new discourse and show that there are several ways of interpreting the histories written and disseminated by documents.

The book reproduces all the works in the ‘Figures’ series (30 pieces plus a dozen images produced as part of the same project), as well as numerous preparatory documents showing the process of creating the fresco. This iconographic corpus is accompanied by a text by exhibition curator François Piron, as well as three texts: one by Yves Chatap, another by Missia Libseka and an interview between the artist and Dominique Malaquais (1964-2021), historian and critic of contemporary African art.