Harilay Rabenjamina at Goswell Road / Paris

Harilay Rabenjamina
LE NEZ DE MA MÈRE (MY MOTHER'S NOSE)

20 November - 11 December, 2021

Goswell Road
22 Rue de l'Échiquier
Paris, France













All images courtesy and copyright of the artist and space.

We are happy to present 'Le nez de ma mère' (My mother's nose) by French-Madagascan artist Harilay Rabenjamina. We presented Rabenjamina's first solo show in 2017, 'TRAG&DIE', a multi-faceted work featuring film, performance, and installation, which saw Rabenjamina in character. For this show, Rabenjamina presents a new body of work, shedding his usual characterisation to recount a very personal story: Le Nez de Ma Mère (My Mother's Nose).

Le Nez de Ma Mère (My Mother's Nose) is both the title of the film and the exhibition. It is a story of family, oppression, and tenderness.


I photographed my sister a lot in our flat and in the woods that bordered our housing estate. She was my model. I asked her to pose. To motivate her, I often had to insist that her laziness in posing would be forgotten tomorrow, while the photos would remain. I told her that the photos would look like those of the white actresses in the telenovelas that she admired. It was true. With time, the tendency reversed, it was she who asked me to take new portraits of her. I became her photographer. One day, my sister's face changed. My mother reproached her for it. A week later, it was my mother's face that changed. Rabenjamina, 2021


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Harilay Rabenjamina (Born in 1992, Bordeaux (FR) lives and works in Paris. His work consists of performances, films, objects, and songs, often using characters who struggle with representing themselves. Harilay Rabenjamina's work has been presented at Centrale Fies (Dro, Italy), Théâtre Arsenic - Les Urbaines (Lausanne) Auto Italia (London), Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), Treize (Paris), PEACH (Rotterdam), Goswell Road (Paris). In 2021 he was artist-in-residence at Triangle – Astérides (Marseilles) and recently presented a collaborative work with Loup Rivière at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (Copenhagen) in a program curated by Cédric Fauq.


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Goswell Road is a non-profit artist-run space based in Paris, France, founded in November 2016 by artist duo Ruiz Stephinson. The name originates from the road the artists lived on in London, before relocating to Paris, and is said to derive from the phrase “God’s Well,” which references the pagan practice of well-worship. With each show a book is published and flowers are curated in parallel with the works shown.