Last Year in Antananarivo is a series of photographs of a ball held by the French colonials in 1900 in Antananarivo which I found in the FTM archives in Madagascar. This discovery set me off on a journey, exploring the relationship between memory, pain and identity. In the images the Malagasy are dressed by the French in elaborate costumes to reflect the colonialists’ idea of ‘civilised’ people. An inherent duality – the colonized and the colonizer, the past versus the present, pain and pleasure, the subjectivity of identity and the notion of ‘civilisation’.
At the same time, the title Last Year in Antananarivo, which is inspired by the French film Last Year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais, arises from my life and work in Paris. The aesthetic of the film, the timelessness and absence of any sense of temporality – there is no real story, no definitive end and no answer to the questions posed. Instead the questions simply raise a further enquiry – leading to an ongoing dialogue about memory and meaning.
The images are poignant, haunting, invoking a sense of loss and moral outrage, and refuse to reach any conclusion or offer us any solution. The idea of dialogue is fundamental – there are overlapping yet segmented memories, no moral certainty, no definitive truth.
This text and the two images are from the series: Joël Andrianomearisoa, Last year in Antananarivo, 2016, photographs found in the Archives FTM Madagascar, copyright Joël Andrianomearisoa & Sabrina Amrani Madrid.