19 - Charlotte Yonga - (TSY) Possible

Jul 6, 2026 – Oct 4, 2026

In this series produced in Madagascar, Charlotte Yonga turns photography into a relational gesture. The artist constructs her images based on the often-intimate bonds she weaves with her subjects. Her truth emerges from shared time, mutual trust and attention given to others. Yonga explores emotional dynamics, whether friendly, familial, sisterly or romantic, known in Malagasy as fitiavana, a word that simultaneously translates all these concepts of love and attachment to life. Rarely explicit, fitiavana reveals itself in the shadows of everyday life, in the restraint of silences and delicate gestures that Yonga brings to light. Through co-created scenes inspired by family photography and popular stories, the artist respects local codes of modesty while opening up a space of visibility for the intimate. The title plays on the negation tsy “no” in Malagasy, and the French word “possible,” evoking a space where imaginations can be reinvented. The series also questions the lack of representation of Indian Ocean identities and seeks to emphasize the beauty of the ordinary while documenting the tensions experienced by a young generation pulled between traditions and personal aspirations. In 2025, this youth rose up, with the defiant strength of those who demand above all to be heard, giving a strong political resonance to this work, which succeeded in crystallizing in the public space the tensions captured in the intimate. Each image thus becomes an act of foreshadowing memory, a sensitive archive of desires, silences and expectations ready to explode. Through her images, Yonga turns photography into a space where truth, listening and attention come together to construct a profoundly human gaze, grounded in an omnipresent nature, and nurturing a sensitive connection with the self, others and living things. Yonga’s work reminds us how memory resides not solely in the frozen past of the archive; it is also in front of us, in the fragile present of each encounter, ready to surface into the world. Nadine Hounkpatin