AMOR FATI

An Hakanto Flag project

by Felana Rajaonarivelo

SAADIA, SOAVADIA

A project

by Mbolatiana Raoilison alias Clipse Teean

DIA HO IRAY IHANY IZAHO SY IANAO

A monographic exhibition

of Mirado Ravohitrarivo

M’AA SANS TOI

A monographic exhibition

of Xhi sy M’aa

WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE

A monographic exhibition

of Mickaël Andrianirina

IN THE FIRST HOURS OF THE NIGHT WE ARE ALL SENTIMENTAL

A group exhibition with

Emilie Andriamahefa . Fanja Andriamanantena . Jean-Luc Andrianasolo . Donné Vonj . Boris Lock . Miranto Rafanomezana . Mamy Rajoelisolo . rakotographie . Jean Rambinintsoa . Daniela Razafindrakoto . Richianny and Mat Li . Temandrota . Vola sy Noro

SENTIMENTAL

SENTIMENTAL, a new season at Hakanto Contemporary.

A breath renewed, a promise never uttered,

Another chapter, another time… an exercise for a feeling yet to be named.

SENTIMENTAL

A noir reverie etched upon the hearts of the brave.

Endless words beneath the flicker of a trembling sun.

A secret cloth, caught in the wind, enfolding the fates of the now.

A muffled sigh yearning to be born anew

A dark breeze that shatters time, while our souls waver, unrestrained.

SENTIMENTAL

A conversation of time, yet untethered from any timeline.

An intimate subject, and at once universal.

A vivid impulse, forever testing its fate in the realm of eternity.

A monologue, existing only through the presence of another.

A tale without geography, yet deeply rooted within each of us. Yes—

WE ARE ALL SENTIMENTAL.

And here, today, it matters that we talk about sentimentality.

Here at Hakanto Contemporary, we invite you to open the conversation.

To be Malagasy and to be sentimental.

Malagasy sentimentality—observed, reinterpreted, and reimagined by twenty artists.

Malagasy artists—those alive and those nearly forgotten, the baroque and the precise, the voices of today and echoes of yesterday, the fully formed and those still becoming.

Here, the artists—all of them—offer a dialogue where certainty waltzes with doubt.

Without drama, perhaps this is how sentiment plays out in Malagasy form.

In the shimmer of the past, we graze it. At dusk, after many sorrows, at last—we dare.

Conversations where the no lingers, gently murmured by a quiet yes.

To speak of sentiment here, on this land, is never a given.

And so the players seek subterfuge to refine their performance.

Feelings are stolen at the street corner—violently, yet without passion.

Provocation borrows the face of shyness.

Lips, full and weary, kiss only the canvases of lost affections.

The unspoken speaks in plain truth.

The body dresses itself as an artefact of memory.

Straw catches fire gently beneath the flame of imagined liaisons.

Flirtation replays the old film of disappointment.

Pain is written in the key of rapture.

Money hums the truest note of longing.

Ritual unfolds, yet without a love song.

The hand lays its caress upon the anatomy of a certain possible.

These gestures and words may appear dark—

a response from the artists to the delicacy of the subject.

Yet this tragic tone exists perhaps to awaken, in each of us—Malagasy or not—

the vital role of sentimentality in our lives.

The strength of desire.

The sentimental desire for everything, the everything SENTIMENTAL—as the only way to truly live.

Joël Andrianomearisoa

2025