Jesse Darling at the Palais de Tokyo: an exhibition balancing memory and forgotten narratives

The Palais de Tokyo in Paris is presenting an exhibition devoted to British artist Jesse Darling, winner of the 2023 Turner Prize, titled The Ambassadors, on view from April 3 to September 13, 2026. Through large installations crafted from salvaged materials and everyday objects, the artist examines the fragility of the frameworks, reference points, and systems that organize our lives.

At the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, Jesse Darling presents Les Ambassadeurs, a new exhibition running from April 3 to September 13, 2026. A Turner Prize 2023 laureate, the British artist transforms the museum’s spaces with a set of large-scale installations crafted for this site, responsive to its architecture, history and surroundings. Using salvaged materials, industrial scrap and everyday objects, Darling weaves a journey where sculpture and storytelling meet. The exhibition sheds light on the fragility of things, bodies and the systems that structure our lives.

The artist offers a sensory and visual environment in which visitors are invited to move through it. The materials used — shop signs, suspended objects, flags and fans — come from the immediate surroundings and are transformed into altered forms, marked by time, evoking a sense of depletion and fragility. Each installation seems to hold a latent narrative, buried in the folds of the material, probing the link between body, power, and material memory.

Raw Materials, Everyday Objects, and Hidden Stories

The exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo presents a series of installations crafted from ordinary objects turned relics. Jesse Darling's works reshape the meaning of everyday items, imbuing them with a critical perspective. Security barriers are transformed into fragile insects, shelves sag as if burdened by overload, and colorful votive offerings—made from waste, images, and stickers—stand as collective monuments. Overall, the show explores a poetic form of recycling, where the artist's aim is less to beautify materials than to question the systems that have produced, worn, and discarded them.

As detailed in the museum's statement, "this poetic reimagining of reality, which resembles a form of disarmament, temporarily distances viewers from its violence to better neutralize, analyze, and understand it." The piece, fluid and fragmented, takes the shape of an unstable landscape—a blend of installation and storytelling—where vulnerability becomes a shared experience, a way of existing.

An Exhibition Highlighting the Spring Season at the Palais de Tokyo

Jesse Darling's exhibition is part of the spring lineup at the Palais de Tokyo, alongside other temporary shows. It's worth noting that the artist is represented by Galerie Sultana based in Paris. Recently, Jesse Darling showcased works at Towner Eastbourne in the UK in an acclaimed exhibition titled Enclosures, which earned recognition from the Turner Prize 2023. The artist has also had exhibitions at Camden Art Centre, Modern Art Oxford, and in Marseille at Triangle France – Astérides. Their work has been featured in major biennials and group shows such as the Venice Biennale, MMK Frankfurt, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Regarding the exhibition, this isn’t about presenting a straightforward or purely illustrative narrative. Instead, it aims to create a space for perception where objects, shapes, and materials serve as subtle signals, hovering between memory and erasure. The artist isn’t trying to assert a definitive truth but to make visible what endures, what remains, what wears us down. It’s an invitation to listen to the silent stories of things and to explore the tangible infrastructure of everyday life.

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