Joseph Grigely — This is where we are / Nous en sommes là — Palais de Tokyo — Exhibition — Slash Paris

In about 2 months: April 3 → September 13, 2026

The accessibility of a place is first revealed through its architecture: impassable steps, indirect routes, and specialized devices that must be activated. These obstacles shape how bodies move and expose structural inequalities within cultural spaces.

Invited by the Palais de Tokyo to intervene in a particularly inaccessible area, Joseph Grigely addresses questions of disability and access by interrogating architectural form itself. What would happen if a ramp met a staircase? How might access become a shared responsibility rather than a constraint assigned to certain bodies?

Through a group of works and a risograph publication, the artist develops the idea of an “access prosthesis,” a conceptual and material tool rooted in his experience as a deaf person. The project calls for a fundamental rethinking of how institutions conceive accessibility—not as a simple adjustment, but as a structural issue shaped by imperfect historical decisions—hence the exhibition’s title: This Is Where We Are.

For more than thirty years, Joseph Grigely has pursued a practice in which accessibility is treated as a medium in its own right. Best known for his Conversation Pieces, composed of handwritten notes exchanged with hearing people, he transforms fragments of communication into visual narratives that reveal the conditions of access to speech, spaces, and relationships.