The sixth edition of the 50JPG of the Centre de la photographie Genève has been held between 19 June and 25 August 2019. The main exhibition aimed to bring together Eros & Cosmos. Under the title “OSMOSCOSMOS”, it highlighted the link between these two universes, a connection that has been very little studied in our western cultures, probably too much influenced by monotheistic religions and the feelings of guilt developed in association with Eros, with the purpose of making the individual more subject to the ascendancy of the churches.
Jean-Pierre Vernant, a specialist in Greek antiquity, emphasizes that the sexualisation of the god Eros occurred at the moment when Uranus was castrated and withdrew from Gaia in pain to become the starry sky above our heads. And for the philosopher Michel Onfray, referring to the Kama Sutra, sex is defined as follows: “... natural, attuned to the cosmos, never separated from the world, always there as a reminder of the bond between the parts of a greater whole.”
A dozen of works establish this relationship between the two facets of “OSMOSCOSMOS”, such as Words and Stars by Grazia Toderi and Orhan Pamuk, or the contributions of Ursula Böhmer, Bunu Dhungana, Heidi Hassan, Eden Levi Am, Urs Lüthi, Boris Mikhailov, Johan Österholm, Thomas Ruff, Pierre Radisic, Catherine Radosa, Annie Sprinkle (with Beth Stephens), Christian Waldvogel and others.