JULY 7TH TO OCTOBER 5TH 2025
SORTILÈGES
PROGRAM ASSOCIATED WITH RENCONTRES D’ARLES 2025
july 7th to october 5th 2025
18 rue de la Calade — Arles
Sortilèges
In 2025, the Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation celebrates its 10th anniversary at Hôtel Blain with a captivating exploration of mystery, magic, and occult worlds. This program invites visitors to cross the threshold of the invisible, delve into the unknown, and question beliefs that defy reason. Between shadow and light, ancient rites, legends, and mystical forces intertwine. Boundaries waver, giving way to a universe where the strange and the marvelous merge.
Each exhibition becomes a passage, an echo of hidden traditions, an immersion into the elusive. Far from certainties, this sensory journey opens the doors of imagination and reveals the aura of mystery. It challenges the concepts of good and evil: what is considered harmful, and what belongs to the spiritual realm? Witchcraft and occult practices, often marginalized, are they expressions of mystical power or acts of defiance against social norms?
Belief and witchcraft are deeply intertwined, traversing history as reflections of our fears and aspirations. The advent of writing and the spread of the Bible marked a turning point, structuring the sacred and the profane. This upheaval led to witch hunts, persecuting those who embodied ancient knowledge, voices outside dogma, and a feared counterpower.
Through the figures of the Black Madonna, Saint Sarah, and Mazu in Taoism, the program examines popular beliefs that, between devotion and transgression, transcend cultures and eras. The figure of the witch, alternately feared and rehabilitated, unfolds into a feminist reading of history: a symbol of power, resistance, and forbidden knowledge.
18 rue de la Calade — Arles
Sortilèges
In 2025, the Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation celebrates its 10th anniversary at Hôtel Blain with a captivating exploration of mystery, magic, and occult worlds. This program invites visitors to cross the threshold of the invisible, delve into the unknown, and question beliefs that defy reason. Between shadow and light, ancient rites, legends, and mystical forces intertwine. Boundaries waver, giving way to a universe where the strange and the marvelous merge.
Each exhibition becomes a passage, an echo of hidden traditions, an immersion into the elusive. Far from certainties, this sensory journey opens the doors of imagination and reveals the aura of mystery. It challenges the concepts of good and evil: what is considered harmful, and what belongs to the spiritual realm? Witchcraft and occult practices, often marginalized, are they expressions of mystical power or acts of defiance against social norms?
Belief and witchcraft are deeply intertwined, traversing history as reflections of our fears and aspirations. The advent of writing and the spread of the Bible marked a turning point, structuring the sacred and the profane. This upheaval led to witch hunts, persecuting those who embodied ancient knowledge, voices outside dogma, and a feared counterpower.
Through the figures of the Black Madonna, Saint Sarah, and Mazu in Taoism, the program examines popular beliefs that, between devotion and transgression, transcend cultures and eras. The figure of the witch, alternately feared and rehabilitated, unfolds into a feminist reading of history: a symbol of power, resistance, and forbidden knowledge.
Fotohaus amplifies this program with the theme Controversy and Paradox, inviting an exploration of the tensions and contradictions that arise when beliefs collide with reality. In a French and European society shaped by rationalism, spirituality is often relegated to the periphery of dominant discourse, oscillating between fascination and rejection.
Thus, Sortilèges encourages questioning the established order, uncovering the hidden facets of our cultures, and rehabilitating the mysterious in contemporary society. Today, as some societies witness the decline of figures who challenge norms—whether through feminism, protest, or other forms of singularity—Sortilèges opens a dialogue on these forgotten memories and their resonance in our world.
Western society, by establishing rationalism as the norm, has often rejected or minimized spiritual forms that escape institutional frameworks. Yet, these marginalized beliefs and practices persist, offering an alternative reading of the world. Can we still accept the inexplicable? Are we ready to embrace these traditions, beliefs, and suppressed knowledge to build a more open world? Or are we doomed to perpetuate the exclusion of what transcends our reason?
Artists
Joan ALVADO, Ian CHEIBUB, Maja DANIELS, Alexandre Dupeyron DUPEYRON, Weronika GĘSICKA, Jann HOEFER, Martin LAMBERTY, Laura LAFON CADILHAC, Silvia PRIÓ, Virginie REBETEZ, Wlad SIMITCH, Ann-Christine WOEHRL.
Collectives
FREELENS, INLAND, Laif, The Reporters.
Curators
Anne-Marie BECKMANN, Christel BOGET, Gilles CARGUERAY, Emmanuelle HASCOËT, Klaus KEHRER, David KERN, Gilles MASSOT, Heike OLLERTZ, HILDESHEIM PIROT ZIEGLER, Cornelia SIEBERT.
Art direction
Florent BASILETTI
Os batismos da meia-noite
Joan ALVADO
The mountainous heart of Alto Minho, in northern Portugal, is a mystical territory where isolation has shaped the beliefs of its inhabitants for centuries. Here, the boundary with the afterlife fades, and spells, communication with the dead, possessions, night rituals, alleged witches, sacrifices, exorcisms, apparitions, and protective amulets still coexist.
As the world’s population clusters in overcrowded cities, modernity tends to erase ancestral beliefs in favor of rationalism. Yet, since the dawn of time, certain phenomena have defied logical explanation.
Os batismos da meia-noite is a photographic essay balancing fantasy and ethnographic research, revealing the persistence of a unique spiritual vision passed down through generations. This work explores a cultural heritage deeply rooted in the Serra da Peneda, where forces of light and darkness seem to wage battle since time immemorial.
curator Fahr 021.3
Gertrud on the silence of myth
Maja DANIELS
In 1667, in Sweden, Gertrud Svensdotter, a 12-year-old girl, was accused of walking on water in Älvdalen. This event triggered a wave of witch hunts, marking a period of collective hysteria and persecution.
This series revisits these events by anchoring them in the present, where history and myth intertwine in a new narrative with an open-ended outcome. Through still and moving images, it explores the creation of myths, which, like photographs, remain open to interpretation, never entirely fixed. The essence of an image often lies in the invisible and its silent echoes.
By shaping new rituals inspired by those of the past, this approach questions historical narratives and examines how a visual language can redefine our connection to the past, present, and future. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze’s idea that the new must disguise itself as the old in order to emerge, the project uses photography as a tool of provocation across time, offering alternative interpretations of history and paving the way for future speculations. Thus, the image becomes a strategy for shaping and imagining a different world.
partners Benrido, Hariban Award
Présage Tirage Mirage
Laura LAFON CADILHAC
Présage Tirage Mirage is a photographic project carried out in the province of Valparaíso, Chile, between 2019 and 2024, in a context marked by hope, progressive struggles, and disenchantment.
Rather than serving as proof, photography here becomes a pretext for self-narration. Residents of Chile were invited to participate in staged scenes embodying their desires and visions for the future. These images, created using expired film, give rise to a photographic oracle that can be consulted during individual sessions. Each participant randomly selects a dozen photographs and shares their own interpretation, opening a space for confidence and projection.
Far from predicting the future, this oracle invites intimate and collective reflection. The recorded and archived exchanges form a sonic library of interpretations. At the intersection of art therapy and speculative documentary, Présage Tirage Mirage is a photographic performance that questions the emotional power of images and how they shape our perception of the world. Exhibited in a ritualized form, these images become sensitive refuges, revealing both our concerns and our visions of the future.