PAST EXHIBITIONS

A Group Exhibition
8 July – 25 November 2023

Curated by
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Ludonie Velotrasina
Rina Ralay-Ranaivo

Hakanto Contemporary
Alhambra Gallery · Ankadimbahoaka
Antananarivo · Madagascar

This exhibition reveals a plurality of artistic approaches and a diversity of aesthetics. The artists brought together here all share a connection with the lamba — at times an object of fascination, at others of experimentation, imagination, or even fantasy.

Material, weaving and emotion: this thread that runs through time and across all Malagasy geographies emerges as a powerful aesthetic subject — a breath of life and a source of inspiration.

While photographer Kevin Ramarohetra confirms, through his images, the omnipresence of the lamba in the everyday life of the Malagasy capital, painters Émile Ralambo and Jean-Yves Chen sublimate this enduring relationship with textile from different perspectives within their respective practices.

In other propositions, the lamba becomes a disorienting process. Madame Zo, whose weaving practice is fuelled by a series of experiments, confronts us with an assemblage of VHS tapes transformed into furniture. The thread of film thus traverses another temporality. Facing the armchair, Joël Andrianomearisoa and Madame Zo, in a joint installation presented for the first time in Madagascar, affirm that the textile lamba is a game of impossible desire — like a life in which the heel pierces the mirror, all the way to the thread that clings to the remnants of intoxication.

The technical dimension is explored in the work of Sandra Ramiliarisoa, produced in polyfloss. Her piece illustrates an endless enumeration of practices of twisting, weaving and knotting.

In a more conceptual register, the bemiray feeds the practice of Tsiriniaina Irimboangy in his installation Sombin-tantara, which brings together elements of his research on the lamba, driven by the vivid memory of his grandmother wearing it according to Malagasy tradition.

For his part, Gad Bensalem presents an installation that becomes a way of calling upon the absent or deceased father. The actor deconstructs the lamba and pulls at its thread to recount the story of young Doda in his search for identity, revisiting the memory of the women who raised him and of the father he never knew.

Still within this familial register, yet through an architectural approach, visual artist Nadia Randriamorasata retraces her genealogy and reconnects with the history of her origins in the creation of her work. She chooses to erect a set of architectural forms as a tribute to her family figures — particularly those on her paternal side — who now belong to the world of the ancestors.

The photographs of Christian Sanna proclaim that textile can be both a garment of sensuality and an object of ritual adornment, while the video work of choreographer and dancer Nazaria Tooj expresses the idea of rebirth.

Here again, geography loses its relevance. H. Ranaivo exhumes the traditional shroud and transforms it into a tailor of life. Christian Lacroix allows himself to be embroidered by Malagasy hands. Clée Rabeharisoa and Charlotte Razafindrakoto, following their respective experiences at Christian Dior and Balmain, dress the high society of the central highlands. In resonance with these textile creations, the elegance of the figures wearing the lamba, photographed by Ramilijaona and Rasolonjatovo, bears witness to a form of sophistication rooted in this sartorial tradition.

Beyond formal exercises, the lamba emerges as a whisper to our souls.
As proof, writer Jean-Luc Raharimanana weaves his memory, thoughts and states of mind through his novels, short stories and essays. Far from the literary work one might have expected, the author presents, for the first time, a series of original drawings taken from his notebooks.

Joël Andrianomearisoa
2023