PLEASE
SING ME MY SONG
BEFORE YOU GO
JOËL ANDRIANOMEARISOA
Please Sing Me My Song Before You Go is Joël Andrianomearisoa’s inaugural solo exhibition at Hakanto Contemporary. It revolves around an eponymous film, the first that the artist has created, commissioned by the IFA Gallery and premiered globally in Berlin in 2024 during his exhibition Measures Lullabies and Whispers*.
Blending various forms of expression and manipulating different media in his work, Joël Andrianomearisoa weaves his creations through a multitude of materials: metal, textiles, paper, words… and now image and sound. His film Please Sing Me My Song Before You Go is an intimate and melancholic piece that draws upon the resonances of fragmented memory, haunted by the echo of a lullaby, Iny Hono Izy Ravorombazaha. Passed down through generations, this melody is itself inspired by the traditional tale Imaitsoanala: a story of separation and flight, where the giant bird Ravorombe opposes the union of his human daughter with her beloved, leading to an odyssey of escape and an ode to the desire for freedom.
However, here, the lullaby is not merely a soothing song. It transforms into a song of abandonment. Joël Andrianomearisoa subverts the sweetness of the refrain to reveal the underlying tear: that of departure, renunciation, and the gradual erasure of the other. Through an abstract staging, he captures the remnants of presence—the memory of the first encounter, the slow encroachment of silence until the abdication of bodies.
The obsessive rhythm of the lullaby becomes, in this film, a living substance, a heartbeat oscillating between mourning and hope. In this oscillation between the personal and the universal, the film transcends mere narrative: it becomes a space, a threshold where abandonment becomes a whisper, where absence is inscribed in imagery, where the song persists, suspended in time.
From this feeling of abandonment, Joël Andrianomearisoa also reveals other forms and aesthetic languages in this exhibition through additional installations, including some works that explore accumulation and repetition in an attempt to solidify memory and interrogate forgetfulness.
First, this series of display cases houses flickering candles, slowly consuming their own light. The wax melts, solidifies, and accumulates in the hollow of the glass, leaving behind silent imprints of fading time. A fragile presence, a memory in the making.
This scene evokes a familiar landscape — the streets of the capital at dusk. These ephemeral makeshift stalls where the discreet glow of candles illuminates the precarious displays of street vendors. A fleeting light that accompanies passersby returning home or night wanderers surrendering to the night.
Inspired by minimal art** — a movement championed by major artists such as Donald Judd (1928- 1994), known for his geometric metal and plexiglass sculptures — this installation by Joël Andrianomearisoa reinvents an everyday ritual in his own way, elevating it to the realm of poetry.
Then, this installation of four hundred aluminum plates stands as a constellation of memories. Evoking commemorative plaques, they inscribe in metal the echo of a presence, the weight of a memory frozen in matter.
Through this piece, echoing earlier works currently exhibited at the Zinsou Foundation in Benin —
La Promesse de la Terre, an accumulation of earth plates,
and Le Miroir de la Terre, another accumulation of mica plates – Joël Andrianomearisoa makes tangible through matter the testimony of time that follows separation, ensuring that the imprint of the past remains and that memory does not sink into oblivion.
Finally, in this same quest to preserve traces, the artist extends the gesture by disseminating the imprints of his own hand throughout the exhibition space. On canvases soaked in black oil, he leaves a mark that is both intimate and universal, a silent dialogue between presence and erasure, between body and memory, between what remains and what escapes.
Finally, Hakanto Contemporary will permanently close its first exhibition space at the Alhambra Gallery in Ankadimbahoaka, after five years of activity and programming. This closing will take place with the exhibition by Joël Andrianomearisoa. The artist marks this final chapter with a deeply symbolic gesture — a last resonance, a final imprint before silence — extending the story of this founding and historic space, which has witnessed so many creations and dialogues.
Rina Ralay Ranaivo, March 2025
* Measures Lullabies and Whispers was Joël Andrianomearisoa’s first solo exhibition in Germany. Held in 2024 and commissioned by the IFA Gallery, it was curated by Alya Sebti and Meriem Berrada.
** Minimal art or minimalism is an artistic movement that emerged in the 1960s in the United States, characterized among other things by the use of simple and geometric forms, often repeated in series, creating an effect of rhythm and regularity.