ANTANANARIVO.- Fondation H is presenting Correspondances, a carte blanche offered to artist Roméo Mivekannin. This exhibition unfolds within a network of personal and collective exchanges, rooted in territories dear to the artist: his native Benin, his adopted city of Toulouse, and Antananarivo, where he pursued his reflections in collaboration with Malagasy artisans and in dialogue with Hobisoa Raininoro, the exhibition’s curator. Correspondances thus becomes a living space for the circulation of ideas, forms, and narratives, embracing the full meaning of the word “correspondence”: written, visual, memorial, and symbolic.
With Correspondances, Fondation H offers a sensitive and critical rereading of a chapter of colonial history. Mivekannin draws inspiration from postcards dating from the colonial era—seemingly banal yet deeply violent, emblems of a racist imaginary—and subverts them through a series of canvases painted in Toulouse and embroidered in Madagascar. Through this artistic gesture, the artist reinserts dignity, care, and humanity into representations once frozen in time. This is not only about memory, but about repair: an artistic act that restores substance to what history sought to erase.
The exhibition also presents a monumental installation composed of asens—ritual objects from the Voodoo tradition used to communicate with ancestors—which, in many respects, resonate with certain Malagasy funerary traditions. Created by master metalworkers in Madagascar in collaboration with the artist and the curator, this collective work draws from Beninese spirituality while integrating local know-how and echoes. These objects become bridges between worlds, embodying the links between the living and the dead, between continents, between memories. This spiritual dimension affirms that memory is not limited to fixed narratives, but also embraces silences, gestures, and rituals.
The exhibition also enters into dialogue with that of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, presented simultaneously at Fondation H. His monumental installation The African Library (2018), which questions dominant narratives and the way history is told, intersects with Mivekannin’s concerns. Both artists pose the same question: who writes history, for whom, and to what end? Their works invite us to reposition ourselves, to doubt, to deconstruct certainties in order to rebuild other narratives.
This fruitful dialogue embodies the mission of Fondation H: to make art a tool for transformation, a space for reflection, and a catalyst for questioning.
For nearly nine years, Fondation H has been working to support artists and audiences alike. The inauguration of its new space in Antananarivo in 2023 marked a milestone, with now more than 25,000 monthly visitors—including school groups welcomed each morning for guided tours and creative workshops, weekly public events, and extensive programs dedicated to audiences with disabilities. Fondation H has become a place of learning, curiosity, and dialogue—free and open to all— right in the heart of Madagascar’s capital.
The exhibition Correspondances is fully in line with this dynamic. It gives voice to the marginalized, the fragmented, the forgotten. It reflects our conviction that art can be a civic act, a lever to think differently, to give form to the unspeakable, and to imagine other futures.
