Joël Andrianomearisoa – Tady Mitady Tadidy, 2026

Rope has long bound things together but also drawn boundaries and kept things apart. Joël Andrianomearisoa engages with this tension in his work. The Malagasy title plays on the sounds and meanings of tady, mitady and tadidy – “rope”, “to search” and “memory” – while a poem in French, English and Malagasy extends this interplay of language and ideas. Monumental in scale, the installation grows from small acts of giving. It brings together 44 kilometres of thread, rope and fabric sent from Antananarivo, Beirut, New Delhi, Seoul, Sydney, Lyon and elsewhere. Different in colour, thickness and weave, the materials retain their specificity within the collective form. Many were contributed by people connected to the artist’s life and work, travelling to Lyon along the routes of these relationships. Here, where silk weaving shaped the city’s history, personal gifts intertwine with longer histories of labour and exchange.

Emotions and affective states lie at the centre of Joël Andrianomearisoa’s practice, spanning installation, text, sculpture and design. Working with materials such as paper, textiles and found elements, he treats language as both medium and structure. His work moves between abstraction and material presence, drawing on a plurality of references and collaborations to evoke experiences of intimacy, absence and desire. It unfolds through environments where words, materials and sensations intersect according to sensitive and instinctive logics.