Indigo Waves & Other Stories / Joël Andrianomearisoa: The Five Continents of All Our Desires

Zeitz MOCAA presents two new exhibitions—an international research and multi-chapter exhibition Indigo Waves & Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora and a site-specific commission by Joël Andrianomearisoa.

Indigo Waves & Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora
June 30, 2022–January 29, 2023

Presented by Zeitz MOCAA in partnership with Gropius Bau and SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and Vasl Artists’ Association, Karachi, amongst others, the project takes the stories and histories of the Indian Ocean as its departure point, bringing together contemporary artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and thinkers to investigate, unpack and shed light on some of the smaller and bigger historical, cultural and linguistic links between the African and Asian continents. It approaches the Indian Ocean as a communal horizon from which to read Afrasian histories of forced and unforced movement. The perspective from which this exhibition unveils relationalities anchored in this oceanic geography is of perpetual hybridity—addressing “the politics of forgetfulness” as Françoise Vergès notes, rather than re-centring the colonial gaze that restores symmetries of power while echoing from the annals of bygone exploits.

Bearing many names, this water mass covers some 20% of the world’s total oceanic area and spreads between the East African coast, bordering Asia in the north, engulfing Australia in the east and stretching south to the Southern Ocean. There is much in a name, they say, but no single name has the potential of encompassing, containing, signifying or expressing all this body of water stands for, tells, sings or invokes. It is too complex, too deep, too vast and pregnant with a plenitude of histories, to carry just one name. What is certain is that rather than divide, it connects geographies, cultures, peoples, languages, foods, sounds, winds, waters, economies, philosophies and more. The ocean is a fluid joint, a junction of and for affinities and realignments prior to nation-state allegiances.

The exhibition includes ambitious new commissions and existing works by Akinbode Akinbiyi, Malala Andrialavidrazana, Shiraz Bayjoo in dialogue with Traci Kwaai, Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, Ayesha Hameed, Hasawa, Sorab Hura, Cetus Chin-Yun Kuo, Sancintya Mohini Simpson with Isha Ram Das, Oscar Murillo, Myriem Omar Awadi, Thania Petersen and Cinga Samson.

Curators: Natasha Ginwala, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, with Michelangelo Corsaro in collaboration with the Zeitz MOCAA curatorial team

Joël Andrianomearisoa: The Five Continents of All Our Desires
August 2, 2022–June 25, 2023

The atrium of Zeitz MOCAA welcomes a new, site-specific commission of monumental scale by Joël Andrianomearisoa. The Five Continents of All Our Desires celebrates relations and connections. Constructed from Andrianomearisoa’s signature material, black silk paper, six large-scale sculptures form a suspended archipelago in a poetic reference to land masses and geographies of the imagination. For Andrianomearisoa, the work speaks to both migration and language—and the ongoing search for zones of engagement and desire. He constructs a view of a fragile, ambiguous, open-ended world about new possibilities for human contact.

The work is conceived in dialogue with the concrete interior of the museum, and what remains of the original silos of the building; it is both in play and in visual tension with its surroundings. Whilst appearing as large black masses, the thin and soft materiality of the work allows for subtle atmospheric responses to become visible—such as paper rustling due to airflows caused by human movement.

Andrianomearisoa’s practice encompasses working in multidisciplinary ways—with materiality and scale as important considerations. Imbued with complex emotional experiences, his delicate, often ambiguous works are an ongoing series of ever-evolving exercises that consider the aesthetic and architecture of feelings that all perceive yet cannot put a name to.   

The Five Continents of All Our Desires is accompanied by a sound installation, and a display of 40 drawings—a first, significant showing of the artist’s graphic works.

This commission was made possible through a grant from Fonds Yavarhoussen, Madagascar.

Curator: Storm Janse van Rensburg