ZONE ROUGE RACINES

eden levi am

Nominated by

2025

eden levi am, a Jewish and Arab artist of Yemeni and Israeli origin, explores the question of roots through bodies conceived as territories. "zone rouge racines" examines how the political and geopolitical inscribe themselves onto the body and the intimate. The project unfolds as a logbook — a personal archaeology shaped by memory, transmission, rewriting, resistance, and faith. Through analog photography, the artist constructs a narrative — “the exit from the cave” — capturing fragments of Mediterranean landscapes, botanical imprints, bodies in relation, and the omnipresent sea as a symbol of origin. In a world where violences overlap, eden levi am takes a clear stance: against genocide, against the erasure of lives. To break the silence. To reclaim language.

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eden levi am

Nominated in

eden levi am

Lives and Works in

Geneva, Switzerland

eden levi am (b. 1992) is an artist, photographer, and queer activist based in Geneva. For several years they have developed a documentary approach that centres on activism and intimacy. Working primarily with analogue photography and video—and, more recently, performance—their practice offers a personal and affective view of the world that resonates with current social and political issues. From an intersectional feminist and decolonial perspective, their work addresses questions related to the body, gender, identities, and their representations. They graduated from the Vevey School of Photography (CEPV) in 2018. Their work has been exhibited and published in Switzerland and abroad since 2017. It was recently featured at Swiss and international venues and festivals such as Verzasca Foto Festival (2024), Fesses-tival (Geneva 2023), Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival (London 2023), Musée d’art de Pully (CH, 2017 & 2023), Urgent Paradise (Lausanne 2022), Forde (Geneva, 2022), Romantso Gallery Space (Athens 2020), Space Grotesk (Basel 2019), CPG (Geneva, 2019), La Nef (Jura, 2019), and others. Publications include Libération (2021) and Journal des Bains (2016–2025) as well as several exhibition catalogues. In 2021 they were awarded the City of Geneva’s Documentary Photography Grant. The resulting project, Rivers, was published in 2023 as a monograph by Miami Books and presented in a solo exhibition at Halle Nord in Geneva, accompanied by two performances during the Fesses‑tival, a festival that promotes positive and inclusive visions of bodies, identities, and sexualities. Most recently, they presented their latest project, ZONE ROUGE RACINES, within the framework of the JOUPH (2025) programme at Espace Libre in Biel/Bienne.

More projects by this artist

2024

Rivers

"Rivers" is a project initiated by the artist, photographer and queer activist eden levi am during the pandemic, a distressing time marked by isolation, uncertainty and anxiety. Using primarily film, photography and video, and more recently performance, eden levi am’s artistic practice expresses a personal and affective view of the world, which ties with current social and political issues. From an intersectional feminist perspective, their work addresses issues relating to the body, gender, identities and their representations. Their latest body of work, Rivers, is no exception. The artist invited friends and acquaintances from the local queer community to be photographed in the rivers near Geneva. At this specific moment in time, in the midst of the pandemic and its broad-reaching implications in every person’s daily life, the river represented a safe and liberating space, outside of the white and heteronormative society and away from the news. These bodies of water welcomed and embraced the marginalised queer bodies of Rivers’ protagonists. Rather than generating further vulnerability, through the artist’s lens, nudity and deviance from societal norms become empowering and emancipating. The delicate black and white photographs appear to be suspended in time, highlighting the texture of the skin of the models as their bodies are drenched in water and soft sunlight. Inspired from different mythologies surrounding the river and its creatures, including the naiads, Rivers proposes a tender but determined counter-narrative to social norms surrounding the body.