IOn the occasion of the commemorations marking the 550th anniversary of the Battles of Grandson and Morat, La Galerie Philosophique presents an exhibition by Jorge Cañete in which history becomes inner matter, symbolic mirror, and a territory for meditation.

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The exhibition is rooted in a tragic event of March 1476: after Charles the Bold seized the castle of Grandson, the Bernese garrison was hanged and drowned. Shortly afterwards, the Burgundian army was forced to flee, leaving behind a camp laden with gold, tapestries, jewels and riches.

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Here, however, history is not told as a military chronicle. It is approached differently: through the gaze of the raven, a psychopomp figure, witness to bodies and treasures, to death and radiance. In its eyes, two visions that seem opposed — yet are gathered together by destiny — meet: the disappearance of lives and the splendour of things.

Photographs, paintings, mirrors, feathers, branches, wax, gold and voice compose an ensemble in which each element acts as a threshold. The figure of the raven moves through the exhibition like a silent guide: a bird of memory, passage, omen and transformation.

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The exhibition questions this moment in which gold and death are reflected in one another. What remains of a battle when the weapons fall silent? A trace. An image. A fear. A fascination. Perhaps also a question addressed to each of us: what do we do with what history deposits within us?

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As is often the case in the work of Jorge Cañete, the artwork is not merely something to be contemplated. It invites an inner experience. It proposes a displacement: from historical fact to symbolic memory, from collective tragedy to a meditation on destiny, from death towards the possibility of light.

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In Your Eyes, I Saw the Reflection of Gold and Death is an exhibition about what remains after the event: not only in archives, but in images, places, bodies and dreams.

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An invitation to look at history as a mirror.
And perhaps to recognise within it our own share of shadow and gold.

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Speculum Stellae

Ritual installation in the cellar vault

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At the heart of the exhibition route, in the cellar vault, the installation Speculum Stellae extends this reflection in an immersive and ritual form.

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Seven mirrors and seven branches compose a cartography of destinies. Each branch becomes the sign of an existence: paths taken, paths imposed, bifurcations, losses, secret fidelities. In the mirrors, the lines continue, fragment, and answer one another. The visitor no longer merely looks at the work: they enter into its reflection.

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The installation does not seek to illustrate the battle. It opens a space of resonance. The suspended branches evoke at once the trees of execution, the ramifications of destiny, and the invisible constellations that bind the living to the dead. Gold appears discreetly, like a light from the shadow: not triumphant wealth, but a fragile, almost funerary radiance.

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In this subterranean place, the gaze slows down. The past ceases to be a date. It becomes a presence.

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Biographies

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Priscille Oehninger

A cross-genre musician with a classical background, Priscille Oehninger obtained both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree under Bruno Pasquier, before tracing her own path between composition, sound creation and performance.

Curious and audacious, she has developed her own artistic projects while collaborating with artists from a wide range of backgrounds, including John Cale, Ebony Bones, Erik Truffaz and James Noël. Her work explores the passages between music, theatre, image and sensory experience.

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Recipient of the Théâtres Solidaires grant in 2021 and of the Research and Artistic Development grant from the Canton of Vaud, she was also nominated for the Prix culturel du Nord vaudois in 2024. In 2022, she released ELEMENTS, a phono-graphic project and album co-produced with Christophe Calpini, bringing together sound and image in a poetic approach.

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Currently involved in several stage projects — ToutTourne, ELEMENTS Live and Calpini / Belin / QuartelQuartet — Priscille Oehninger continues a sensitive exploration of sound textures, improvisation and presence. Through each of her projects, she weaves bridges between genres and disciplines, seeking a music that breathes, can be seen, and can be felt.

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Manuela Salvi

Manuela Salvi is a journalist and radio voice. Her path is deeply connected to speech, listening and transmission. Through her experience in radio, she has developed a rare attention to the rhythm of words, to their precision, and to their capacity to bring a presence into being.

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In an artistic context, her voice becomes a true space of passage. She does not merely read a text: she gives it breath, density and address. Words then leave the page to inhabit the place, touch the act of listening, and open an inner landscape.

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Through her sensitive way of embodying speech, Manuela Salvi accompanies the works without explaining them. She creates the conditions for deep listening, where text becomes vibration, memory and apparition.

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Jorge Cañete

Winner of the Best International Designer Award in 2014, Jorge Cañete is a Swiss multidisciplinary artist whose practice brings installation, text, image and ritual into dialogue.

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His path can be read as three lives: the first, in Switzerland and internationally, as an executive in the luxury industry with an Executive MBA from Business School Lausanne in 2003, where his sense of time and precision was shaped; the second, devoted to space, with a degree in Interior Design from London Metropolitan University, 2003–2005, and numerous international awards; the third, dedicated to art, gathering these life stages into a single breath, where spatial composition becomes language and his works become contemporary sanctuaries.

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His creations unfold as crossings, composed of thresholds, proportions, symbols and silence. They take the form of sacred places, where memory, absence and metamorphosis become active presences, carried by a grammar of restrained and powerful signs.

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At the heart of this practice are ritual and evolving installations. The work is transformed through the passage and intervention of participants, so that action becomes reflection and engagement. In exchange, a talisman is offered to the visitor as a sign of gratitude, extending the experience beyond the exhibition space, like a trace to be carried away.