Joël Andrianomearisoa PROMESSE

More than an exhibition, 'PROMESSE' is a global project, the outcome of a multi-dimensional conversation and intimate relationship between Joël Andrianomearisoa, the Fondation Zinsou, in Benin, and the many voices that have nurtured this dialogue over time. 

“From Ouidah, Cotonou, the Fondation Zinsou, ourselves, we're going to promise each other worlds and wonders, grandiose, inevitable, magnificent things...” ¹ 

Joël Andrianomearisoa invites the audience to take a journey, a journey with an invented geography and where time cannot be read on a clock. A journey that takes us from Cotonou to Ouidah, from the center of the world to every other place. A journey through memory, emotions and the melancholy of a fading season... A motionless journey through the flow of the works. A journey where solitude is a promise of encounters, silence of music, death of life. 

This exhibition marks the 20th anniversary of the Fondation Zinsou and our very first promise, the one that ushered in all the ones that followed: The promise to always dream together, to transform the world, to never settle for anything but to invent, always. 

The promise, while it never obliges its giver, remains symbolically binding. It carries with it an element of uncertainty, a fragile expectation revealed one work at a time as we follow in the artist's journey from Cotonou to Ouidah. It is the interstice through which poetry enters a piece: a suspended moment between what is and what could be, the expectation of an accomplishment that may never see the light of day. All emotions flow from this promise. From the land of Ouidah to dream locations, these promises may take shape for the duration of an exhibition or forever. 

 1 — Joël Andrianomearisoa, interview by Contemporary A/Fondation Zinsou, October 2024