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Jessy Razafimandimby at Alpina Huus at Arsenic

December 19, 2019

Artist: Jessy Razafimandimby

Exhibition title: Droit de Visite de Digestion

Curated by: Elise Lammer

Venue: Alpina Huus, Arsenic, Lausanne, Switzerland

Date: November 20 – December 01, 2019

Photography: All images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Alpina Huus and Arsenic

For his project at Arsenic, Jessy Razafimandimby took inspiration from La Semaine de la Femme, a weekly lifestyle magazine distributed in Lausanne from 1936 to 1962. Droit de Visite de Digestion was an article detailing a customary of French etiquette traditionally expressed by the guest of a dinner paying a courtesy visit to their host no later than eight days after the dinner had taken place.

This article, like most articles dedicated to good manners from the period, was tainted with prewar conservatism, and arguably part of a larger authoritarian scheme, through which the capitalist class structure could be reinforced. Aimed at modest households, and primarily at women, the magazine was promoting a certain set of behaviours to people who clearly could not afford it, hence re-affirming the financial inferiority of their readers and encouraging aspirational consumption. Though a visit de digestion was an inoffensive act of politeness per se, it was also an elitist marker of social hierarchy.

Razafimandimby developed an installation consisting of a new series of artworks combining antique material he found or purchased during the weeks leading up to the project. With items ranging from late 19th to early 20th century, including a bed headboard, magazine racks, tassels, fabrics, and furniture, the sculptures constitute the conceptual domestic space in which Razafimandimby’s fictional hosts once lived. At the same time, they also form the background to his performance, while being used as props, and serve as displays for a series of A4 black crayon drawings.

Like the pages of a complex script or score, such drawings were all produced during the month he spent living inside the exhibition space, and further develop the narrative potential of the installation. Both active as a painter and performer, Razafimandimby works lies at the intersection of the two mediums, whereby his body enacts movements based on his visual and formal work, and his paintings/drawings trap and fix motions on paper and canvas.

Completing the tableau both literally and physically, Razafimandimby activates this environment four times over the course of the exhibition, with a 40-minute performance during which he incarnates all the narrative characters and elements at once. In a demonstration of sorts, he challenges a normalized vision of what a “home” might be, and how “a guest” should behave, using the home as a metaphorical framework to question notions of taste, belonging and power.

-Elise Lammer

For the second year running, Arsenic is hosting exhibitions by plastic artists who are concerned with the relationship between performance and the domestic space. During this project, curated by Elise Lammer for Alpina Huus, the artists are invited to work in the various rooms of Arsenic, thus defying the notions of the white cube and the black box.

Jessy Razafimandimby was born in Antananarivo in 1995 and grew up there, he currently lives and works in Geneva. Razafimandimby studied at the Geneva University of Art (HEAD) where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in painting and drawing in 2018.

Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Salon Suisse at Palazzo Trevisan Degli Ulivi, Venice, the 17th international Architecture Biennale 2020 (upcoming); Show Me (x4) at 1.1, Basel (2019); Gardy Dream House On The Coast at Artachment, Basel (2018); Concerto per Aerosol at Fondazione Lac O Le Mon, Lecce, Italy (2019). Jessy Razafi-mandimby is nominated for the Société Générale’s Swiss Emerging Artist Prize 2019.

Jessy Razafimandimby, Droit de Visite de Digestion, 2019, exhibition view, (c) Alpina Huus | Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, Lausanne | Cyril Porchet

Jessy Razafimandimby, Droit de Visite de Digestion, 2019, exhibition view, (c) Alpina Huus | Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, Lausanne | Elise Lammer

Jessy Razafimandimby, Droit de Visite de Digestion, 2019, exhibition view, (c) Alpina Huus | Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, Lausanne | Patrick de Rham