Echo Delay Reverb — Art américain, pensées francophones — Palais de Tokyo — Exhibition — Slash Paris

In 6 days: October 20 → December 31, 2025

FROM 10/22/2025 TO 02/15/2026

The group exhibition “ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought” explores the history of the transatlantic circulation of forms and ideas through the works of some sixty artists, bringing together a wide variety of mediums and a number of new commissions.

It presents how art in the USA catalysed the revolutionary energies of thinkers, activists and poets who transcended genres and profoundly reshaped perspectives on the world, from Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida to Frantz Fanon, Jean Genet, Aimé Césaire, Jacques Lacan, Monique Wittig, Pierre Bourdieu and Edouard Glissant… The reception and translation of their work in the United States led to unexpected forms, creating tools for a critical vision of institutions, both those of art and those of society. Theory here serves as an instrument for challenging social, aesthetic and linguistic norms, opening up new ways of seeing and engaging in the world.

“ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought” offers an original exploration of these significant and often overlooked exchanges. The exhibition features works by several generations of artists, from the 1970s to the present day: some attest to a direct dialogue between theory and practice, others are sometimes subversive tributes, and still others are more allusive correspondences. Key historical artists such as Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Renée Green, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson and Glenn Ligon feature alongside younger artists such as Tiona Nekkia McClodden,Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Char Jeré and Cici Wu. The exhibition revisits some of the major figures in American art of recent decades from a fresh perspective. Archival materials throughout the exhibition meanwhile highlight individuals, institutions, and publishers that played a crucial role in disseminating these ideas in the United States.