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.

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.