COUNTERFEIT WORLDS / ASHRAF JAMAL 14/22 ARTAFRICA
It is this fascination with inter-connectedness and difference which remains with us today. Ours is a
globalised world; a world that still searches for some unifying Esperanto; a ‘theatre,’ still fragmented,
despite all the talk of ‘a singular whole.’
The Malagasy-born and Paris-based artist Malala Andrialavidrazana has made this paradox the core
of her own cartographic explorations. “Cartography is both art and science as well as a powerful
tool to control civilisations,” she sagely remarks. “When looking closely at maps and atlases, they are
fascinating because of significant information they can offer within a specific period of time. They
are not faithful representations of realities, but they sometimes convey strong ideas which are the
keys to understanding historical narratives – this is a determining element in my selections.”
Like Grapheus and the creators of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Andrialavidrazana is all too aware of
the fact that maps are dreaming tools, as incisive as they are deceptive and as strategic as they are
corruptible and fantastical. Maps (even today) remain defining shape-shifters; the projections of
ruthless economic, cultural and political pragmatics as well as the sheer lust for discovery. They are
the ever-changing descriptors for our understanding of history and our place in the world.
What makes Andrialavidrazana’s appropriation of this fictitious yet all-too-real cartographic form is
her ability therein to rethink her mercurial place within it. “I don’t limit my works to specific areas,”
Malala Andrialavidrazana, Figures 1862, Le Monde Principales Découvertes, 2015.
UltraChrome Pigment Print on Hahnemühle. Image size : 110,5 x 163,7 cm.