COUNTERFEIT WORLDS / ASHRAF JAMAL 15/22 ARTAFRICA
she says. Her most recent works focus upon ‘a globalised world,’ however, “there are compositions
displaying continents independently.”
The artist’s interest in the ‘counterfeit’ nature of mapping is rich. Not only does she embrace
cartography’s mix of fancy and science, she also, in her process of photographing and interfacing these
surfaces with those of banknotes, confronts ‘the rules against counterfeit’ built into the scanning of
money. Hence the importance of the camera lens, her primary mode of transcription and realignment,
for what Andrialavidrazana is doing is adding to and rethinking the points and vectors of location
and power in our global imaginary.
If trade routes play an important part in our sense of history, as do migration and the randomness of
location, it is because of the significance of navigators and explorers without whom the world could not
have taken the physical and ideological shape it has. “They were sources of true and false information
in the representation of different territories and they also brought up many preconceptions and
stereotypes about different cultures which remain in our collective imagination,” Andrialavidrazana
pointedly remarks. “The more they travelled, the more the world was depicted from their point of
view.”
Perceptions are never innocent, which is why Andrialavidrazana gives us many perspectives. Thoroughly
contemporary, hers is also an age-old diasporic vision. For no matter how avidly we cling to our small
certainties of belonging, we are always on the move. Wilt thou see this wretched world, how full it is of vanity?
Ashraf Jamal is a Cape Town-based cultural analyst, writer and educator. He is the former
editor of ARTsouthAFRICA and currently lectures in Film and Media Studies at Cape
Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
Malala Andrialavidrazana, Figures 1867, Principal Countries of the World, 2015.
UltraChrome Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, 305 gsm, 87 x 163,7 cm.