Exposition « Sumo, forces sacrées »

Much more than a sport, sumo is a millennial ritual deeply rooted in Japanese culture. Immerse yourself in this fascinating universe with a photography exhibition, documentary and fiction screenings, as well as a conference. This focus echoes an exceptional event: the Paris Sumo Tournament organised at the Accor Arena on 13 and 14 June.

The photographic exhibition "Sumo, forces sacrées" by Bruno Aveillan is a project led by Nicolas Bary (TimpelPictures).

In June 2025, director and photographer Bruno Aveillan travelled to Tokyo with Nicolas Bary to photograph the Naruto-beya, the stable led by former ôzeki Kotoôshû Katsunori, a major figure in contemporary sumo and the first European to have reached such a high rank in this discipline.

Born from this rare immersion, the exhibition "Sumo, forces sacrées" offers a contemporary and sensitive reading of sumo, far from representations that reduce it to mere physical power.

Through Bruno Aveillan's gaze, this millennial tradition is revealed as an art of the body, of ritual and presence, where combat becomes form, rhythm, tension and almost writing.

; Credits: © Bruno Aveillan Between harshness and grace, the clash of bodies and ritual, extreme discipline and interiority, his photographs reveal an unprecedented sumo, at once sculptural, symbolic and profoundly human.

Far from any folkloric approach, they deploy a contemporary plastic vision where the image becomes an imprint, between flesh and light, and where the body asserts itself as living matter, traversed by a spiritual and metaphysical dimension.

Through this exhibition, born from an immersion into the heart of Kotoôshû Katsunori's stable, I wish to propose a sensitive and radical exploration of sumo, this ancestral martial art too often reduced to its sole attributes of strength and mass.

Sumo, forces sacrées explores this tension between the raw and the sublime. Between the clash of flesh and the elevation of ritual. Between sweat, breath, fall, sometimes to the point of abstraction.

Bruno Aveillan, ; Credits: © Bruno Aveillan Around the exhibition - Thursday 11 June > 24 September: Films on sumo - Friday 26 June: Conference "Exposer le sumo - L’équilibre absolu au musée départemental des arts asiatiques, Nice "