The Palais de Tokyo presents Echo Delay Reverb: Art américain, pensées francophones, a group exhibition exploring the circulation of forms and ideas between the United States and the francophone world. The show brings together around sixty artists, both historical and contemporary, and reflects on the mutual influence between artistic practice and critical theory. The installation includes a wide range of media - installations, video, photography, archives - along with works commissioned specifically for the project. Central to the exhibition is the dialogue between francophone thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Edouard Glissant, and American artists who have adopted, reworked or critically responded to their writings. Some works are tributes, others involve practices of subtraction or distancing from theoretical models. Among the featured artists are key figures of the American scene such as Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Renée Green, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson and Glenn Ligon, alongside younger voices including Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Char Jeré, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Cici Wu. Archives, documents and publications play a crucial role in showing how ideas have been disseminated, reinterpreted or contested. Curated by Naomi Beckwith with James Horton, Amandine Nana and François Piron, the exhibition develops a narrative that is not linear but multifaceted, shifting between theoretical past and practical present, between historical memory and experimental languages. The aim is to highlight not a one-way influence, but a continuous exchange, often invisible, that renews perspectives on cultural identity, aesthetic norms and artistic languages themselves.
