Exhibition guide

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

Visit details

  • Dates: From Tuesday June 9, 2026 to Saturday September 26, 2026: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
  • Venue: Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, 101, bis quai Jacques Chirac, Paris
  • Price: free
  • Audience: All audiences
  • Source: Event page

About the exhibition

The photographic exhibition “Sumo, sacred forces”

by Bruno Aveillan is a project led by Nicolas Bary (TimpelPictures).

In June 2025, director and photographer Bruno Aveillan went to Tokyo

with Nicolas Bary to photograph Naruto-beya, the team run by

the former ôzeki Kotoôshû Katsunori, major figure in contemporary sumo

and first European to have reached such a high rank in this discipline. Born from

this rare immersion, the exhibition “Sumo, sacred forces” offers

a contemporary and sensitive reading of sumo, far from the representations that

reduced to physical power alone. Through the eyes of Bruno Aveillan,

this age-old tradition reveals itself as an art of the body, ritual and

presence, where the fight becomes form, rhythm, tension and almost writing.

; Credits: © Bruno Aveillan

Between hardness and grace, crash of bodies and ritual,

extreme discipline and interiority, his photographs show a unique sumo,

at once sculptural, symbolic and deeply human. Far from any approach

folkloric, they deploy a contemporary plastic vision where the image

becomes an imprint, between flesh and light, and where the body asserts itself as a

living matter, crossed by a spiritual and metaphysical dimension.

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

Sumo, sacred forces explores this tension between the raw and the sublime.

Between the crash of the flesh and the elevation of ritual.

Between sweat, breath, falling, sometimes to the point of abstraction.

Bruno Aveillan,

; Credits: © Bruno Aveillan

Around the exhibition

  • Thursday June 11 > September 24: Films on sumo
  • Friday June 26: Conference "Exhibiting sumo - Absolute balance at the departmental museum of Asian arts,

Nice"