Temandrota
Temandrota (his official name is Randriahasandrata Razafimandimby) is a painter and sculptor based in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital city. Born in 1975, he attended Antananarivo University, after which, in the absence of any Fine Art School in the entire country, he resolved to teach himself, attending a great number of art residencies at home and abroad.
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His work includes painting, installations, performance, and sculpture. He draws inspiration from the indigenous Tandroy culture—a nomadic people from the southeast of Madagascar with whom he was raised as a child—and explores how it can inform the world we live in.
The organic materials he works with are traditionally used by that community, such as sisal, earth, roots, sap, and cane for habitat, medicine, or spirituality. The production of the works is part of a protocol the artist sets for himself that incorporates spiritual aspects of the Tandroy culture: meditation practices, dance, and music.
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He eschews canvas for paper and pulp, which he makes himself from recycled magazines. Acting like a shaman, he mixes, burns, or collages his materials with acrylic and spray paint. He sometimes adds scraps of man-made electronic materials.
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His works call to mind Art Brut, Arte Povera, or gestural abstract painting. Yet they are unique insofar as they distill, from an insider’s perspective, interconnections between indigenous cosmogonies and the most recent concerns in soil science, the “Third Revolution” of the technological age, climate change, and societal struggles.
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Temandrota was the first recipient of the “Paritana Prize,” developed by the Foundation H, Antananarivo, in 2017. Beyond multiple “guerilla” art interventions in communities around the country, he has had a series of solo shows in Madagascar, including at the prestigious Hakanto Foundation and Foundation H. He was a resident at the prestigious Cité des Arts in Paris twice, where he had a noted solo show at Fondation H and exhibited at the Musée des Arts Premiers. Other residencies abroad include the William Kentridge Art Centre and the Greatmore Studios in South Africa.
