photo courtesy of Jonathan Prisset

b.1994

Paris, France

works and lives between

São Miguel, Paris and Nosy Be

Célia Rakotondrainy was born in Paris in 1994 and currently resides and works between São Miguel, Paris and Nosy Be. After completing her studies at Iéseg Paris, she decided to focus entirely on painting. While pursuing her passion for art, she also enrolled in the Art History program at Oxford through their distance learning program. In 2019, Rakotondrainy furthered her curatorial training at the University of the Arts in Berlin and the Freie Universität in the art market. Rakotondrainy is a self-taught French artist with Malagasy origins.

Rakotondrainy's upbringing in a culturally diverse environment has inspired her to explore and understand the complexities of identity. Her paintings are a means of expressing emotions and exploring the idea that identity is a construction, similar to a work of art.

Through her art she poetically depicts the concept that identity is constantly evolving and dynamically composed of layers that are added, transformed, destroyed, and reformed over time. She believes that this ever-changing process of construction makes it impossible to grasp a universal definition of identity.

She has exhibited globally, including Paris, Miami, Washington DC, Barcelona, or Cologne.

“Through my art, I convey the deep sense of meaning and the beauty that comes with the realization that identity is a journey, not a destination, that we are all works in progress.”