PRESERVED MEMORY Exclusive

Weaving is not only a decorative craft but also a highly complex language. The interlacing of different elements in ancient cultures, such as the Andean “quipu,” was meant to convey not only accounting data but also a living memory of historical events. Reviving this meaningful use of textiles and diverse materials reminds us of the richness of the many ways we can express what lives within us, as well as the memories we wish to preserve through countless forms and substances. We travel in this article to Madagascar to know more about this rich craft through the hands of Madame Zo.
2025


Zoafinivo Razakatrimo (Madame Zo) was a Malagasy artist whose subversion of the island’s old lamba weaving tradition was grounded in a deep understanding of the living presence of material objects. This included — and indeed especially — those items that had been stripped of their original function and thus freed from their codes.




Madame Zo, Tais-toi et dors, 2006, Computer Chips and Textiles, 69 x 49 x 1 cm, © Photo: Nicolas Brasseur, 2023, Courtesy of Fondation H.

For her, weaving served as a means of accessing the unconscious, but also energetic currents, fragments of ancestral memory, and fractured voices.

Madame Zo’s engagement with the theme of mortality and with the solace that can be found in material traces can be followed in the dynamic between narration and abstraction, entropy and regeneration, which runs through her work.

At the same time, the poetic eccentricity of her interests and her creative process does not tend toward dissonance, but toward a kind of generative alchemy. The suggestion of material transformation is revealed in a work like Santé de fer (2020), whose main elements are copper and herbs. That both substances are considered vehicles of transmission — one scientific and energetic, the other medicinal and folkloric — poses no contradiction for Zo, but instead invites a dialogue between the inorganic and the organic.




Madame Zo, Une histoire à dormir debout, 2016, Thread and 35 mm Film, 203 × 200 cm, © Photo: Nicolas Brasseur, 2023, Courtesy of Fondation H.

In another exhibited work, Perdu dans la mer (2019), or “Lost at Sea,” green threads, fabrics, and magnetic tapes are transformed into a hanging installation that, when viewed from the side, recalls a fragile raft. It is not difficult to read the use of driftwood — a material washed ashore after an infinitely long time subjected to the power of the waves — as a metaphor for the uncertainty of today’s migrant crossings on the seas.




(1) Aware. (no date) “Madame Zo” Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo. [online] AWARE. Available at: https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/madame-zo-zoarinivo-razakaratrimo/ (Accessed: 27 November 2025). 
(2) Cultural Survival. (2022) Una declaración moderna tejida de arte antiguo. [online] Cultural Survival. Available at: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/es/node/13658 (Accessed: 27 November 2025).