Olivia BOURGOIS

Olivia Bourgois is a Malagasy visual artist whose artistic practice invokes a wide variety of mediums. For the exhibition Memoria: récits d’une autre Histoire, the artist presents her work Tsiambaratelo, made from recycled raffia scraps, burlap, and cotton wool.

“With her work Tsiambaratelo, which means a secret held only by two people, Olivia Bourgois sets out to revisit the concept of the home. This place of dwelling, which she considers a shelter where secrets are hidden, takes on a new meaning. (…) Olivia Bourgois also highlights the complexity of maintaining a home. A knowledge passed down from mother to daughter or acquired by the force of circumstance.”

VLFineart’s Vision

Through her uninhibited imagination, as if emerging from a parallel dimension, Olivia Bourgois has the effect of a whimsical flower in the middle of the desert. Her work is an invitation for the public to express themselves about the experiences they live through the artist’s pieces, which are like open windows into a more whimsical world or at least a magnified one.

The works of Olivia Bourgois

Tsiambaratelo 2023

Raphia tressé 2m x 1,50m x 1,50m Exhibited at the H Foundation, Antananarivo, as part of the *Memorie: Récits d’une autre Histoire* exhibition. *Tsiambaratelo* means “secret” in Malagasy, or literally, “not to be shared by three.” This work explores the intimate memory of spaces and how places, much like objects, retain the traces of the lives that pass through them. Woven entirely from raffia, *Tsiambaratelo* takes the form of a house, a fragile structure where each wall is made up of three-strand braids. Each braid symbolizes a secret, a memory woven into the material, a fragment of personal or collective history. Like an architecture of intimacy, this house evokes the boundaries between what we choose to reveal and what we keep buried. By questioning the notion of home and transmission, the work sheds light on these shared silences, these invisible legacies that connect us to one another. It invites reflection on what we preserve within ourselves, the memories that inhabit us, and how spaces become the guardians of our history.