PAST EXHIBITIONS

The Second Season of Hakanto Contemporary
17 May – 16 November 2025

Curated by
Joël Andrianomearisoa

Hakanto Contemporary
ZFI · Ankadimbahoaka
Antananarivo · Madagascar

SENTIMENTAL

SENTIMENTAL, a new season at Hakanto Contemporary.
A new breath, an unprecedented promise.
Another chapter, another time…
an exercise towards a new sensation.

SENTIMENTAL
A dark film imprinting itself upon courageous hearts.
Endless words under the glow of a trembling sun.
A mysterious fabric, wrapping present destinies in the wind.
A muffled whisper attempting a rebirth.
A sombre breeze that fractures time,
and our souls that waver without restraint.

SENTIMENTAL
A conversation with time, yet belonging to no temporality.
An intimate subject, and at once a universal one.
A vivid effect that endlessly tries its luck with eternity.
A monologue that exists only through the other.
A story without geography, yet deeply rooted within each of us. For yes —
WE ARE ALL SENTIMENTAL.
And here, today, it matters that we speak of sentimentality.

Here, at Hakanto Contemporary,
we propose to open the debate on this very question:
being Malagasy, and being sentimental.
Malagasy sentimentality — seen, revisited and reinterpreted by some twenty artists.
Malagasy artists, from the most vibrant to the most forgotten,
from the most baroque to the most precise,
from the present to yesterday,
from the fully formed artist to the one still becoming.

Here, the artists — all of them — open a discussion
where certainty waltzes with doubt.
Without drama: perhaps this is how sentimentality is played out in Malagasy culture.
In a past brilliance, one merely brushes against it.
At dusk, after so much hardship, one finally dares.
Dialogues of an impermanent no with a softly whispered yes.
To speak sentimentally is no simple matter on this land.

So the protagonists seek stratagems to refine the play.
Feelings are stolen at street corners, with violence yet without passion.
Provocation dons the airs of timidity.
Sated lips kiss only the canvases of lost affections. The unspoken asserts itself in full truth. The body disguises itself as an object of memory. Straw ignites tenderly beneath the fires of imagined adventures. Seduction replays the film of disappointment. Pain conjugates itself within the score of rapture. Money hums the finest flavour of desire. Rituals unfold without love songs. A hand lets its caress glide over the anatomy of a certain possible.

These forms and propositions may appear rather dark, given the delicacy of the subject.
Yet this tragic note is surely here to awaken within each of us — Malagasy or not — the essential place of sentimentality in our lives. The force of desire. The desire for sentiment — for everything.
For a wholly SENTIMENTAL way of living. 

Joël Andrianomearisoa
May 2025