Madame Zo

Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo (May 04, 1956 – July 14, 2020) was a Malagasy textile artist, widely known by the nickname Madame Zo.

Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo
Madame Zo with her work
Born	May 04,1956 (1956-05-04)
Died	(2020-07-14)July 14, 2020
Nationality	Malagasy
Other names	Madame Zo
Known for	Textile Art

Madame Zo first worked as a draftsman and cartographer before leaving the profession to train in weaving and dyeing at the Malagasy National Handicrafts Center (CENAM) in the mid-1980s. She was in her thirties when a new chapter of her life began. In 1987, she set up a handweaving workshop in her home in Tananarive. In 1990, she founded the company Les Tisserandes, followed a decade later by the Zo Artiss brand, which she created with her son, Misa Ratrimoharinivo himself a weaver trained by Madame Zo.

At the Tsiazotafo showroom boutique, one could acquire dresses incorporating plastic bags or cinnamon into linen fibers, handbags made of sisal, cotton, wool, and galvanized metal, raffia and wire mesh hats, cushions or lamps encapsulating chili peppers, cloves, peanuts, grass, or coffee beans, as well as small-format works already weaving together film reels and magnetic tape, everyday objects such as straws, earphones, pens, phone cards, and candles, alongside natural elements like bean pods or locust legs. She even wove the fur of her dogs, Bernie and Moulie.

For the artist, the age-old feminine tradition of weaving was a form of confinement she needed to break free from—a prison she dreamed of escaping. According to Sarah Fee, senior curator at the Royal Ontario Museum: It was her desire to break away from everything. As a woman, she was incredibly strong. She wanted to follow her vision, to be true and authentic, no matter the cost — and I believe it costs her a great deal. She sacrificed immensely. She kept repeating that she had broken away, broken away from everything people expect from weaving, because that’s what she had to do. She spoke of weaving as a prison, because of the straight angles. She said she had to break weaving itself and the expectations placed on weavers. It was her mission to shatter all those conventions.

In Madagascar, the lamba — a square or rectangular piece of fabric, emblematic of traditional attire — once accompanied the Malagasy people throughout their entire lives, from birth to death.

She was courageous, bold, someone who followed her vision and beliefs, sometimes against all odds, in a society not always able to understand her,” the curator emphasizes. “ She was an absolutely free woman, and her works were a testament to that.”

While African artists of the same generation, such as Malian Abdoulaye Konaté (born in 1953) or Ghanaian El Anatsui (born in 1944), have gained international recognition in recent years for working in similar fields, Madame Zo did not receive the same media attention. However, she traveled the world (International Design Biennial in Saint-Étienne, Paris Fashion Week), won the Paritana Prize in 2020, and sold some of her creations to the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. (USA).

In many ways, at least before the exhibition Bientôt, je vous tisse tous by Fondation H, Madame Zo’s artistic cry went unheard. Perhaps because she wove the colors of silence? Indeed, many of her works encapsulate words, in the broadest sense of the term. The Malagasy artist wove magnetic tapes (La Jetée de feu, Le Témoin muet), newspapers (Silence 2), film reels (Cinétiss), and very often copper wire, tied to communication technologies (Le Début d’une histoire).‘Be quiet and sleep,’ commands the title of a small piece capturing within it components of radios and computers.

Madame Zo’s textile creations are coded texts—archives? Palimpsests?—for us to decipher. Or more likely, invitations to look beyond the visible material, beyond the transformed medium. In many of her weavings, the artist uses natural materials such as driftwood, sisal, mica, silk cocoons, and medicinal herbs. Perhaps there is a clue here: what if Madame Zo was trying to show us just how deeply our lives are connected to all the particles that make up our world?

In 2012, she embarked on a two-month journey in a van along the RN7. From Antananarivo to Antsirabe, she wove the fruits of her encounters: leeks, bread, cutlery found at the market—immediately purchased, transformed, and exhibited through ingenious modular display systems that she set up in the streets and markets.This way, she moved as close as possible to people, engaging them in conversations and exchanges often centered on the status of art

This performance undoubtedly sheds light on her artistic approach, as well as the phrase Soon, I will weave you all that she wrote in her final letter(exhibition with Fondation H). Is not the ultimate function of art, after all, to bring people together? Madame Zo has taken her final flight, but her art remains.

Today, her son, Misa Ratrimoharinivo now also a textile artist, carries on this art in an entirely new way! The legacy lives on, the art continues, and Madame Zo shines in the heavens, casting her Light upon us here on Earth.

Source : https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1447494/culture/madame-zo-et-ses-tissages-hors-normes-enfin-celebres-a-madagascar/

Education

Madame Zo was educated at the Centre National de l'Artisanat Malagasy and trained in weaving by Andrée Ethève.

Career

Sakalava lamba arindrano and malabary

Madame Zo's work is identifiable by its utilization of a wide array of man-made and natural materials. Working in the tradition of Malagasy lamba weaving styles, she incorporated atypical mixed media, from wood, spices, bean pods and medicinal plants to metals, newsprint, bones, stereo headphones, pens, binder clips, phone cards, spiral notebook rings. The effect is a neutral toned textile piece with three-dimensional intrusions disrupting the surface.

In 2000, she opened a boutique named Zo Artiss with her son Misa Ratrimoharinivo himself a weaver trained by Madame Zo'.

Awards

In 2020, she won the Prix Paritana — a prize awarded annually to a Malagasy artist by Fondation H.

Selected solo and group exhibitions

In 2000 and 2002, Razakaratrimo Zoarinivo was exhibited in the Fourth and Fifth editions of the Dak'Art Biennial. In 2002, her work was exhibited in Gifts and Blessings: The Textile Arts of Madagascar at the National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C, where she is represented in the permanent collection. In 2007, she was included in the 12th International Triennial of Tapestry in Łódź, Poland 2018 her work was included in Madagascar, arts de la Grande Île, an exhibition at the Musée Quai Branly. She had solo exhibitions at Fondation H in Antananarivo in 2018 and 2023-4, respectively titled L’art au quotidien (Everyday Art) and Bientôt je vous tisse tous [Soon I will weave you all]. Her retrospective show at Fondation H presented over 90 pieces spanning 20 years of her career.

Selected public collections

Her work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, and in the Fondation H Collection.

Death

Madame Zo died of Covid-19 in 2020.