Jesse Darling at the Palais de Tokyo: an immersive exhibition blending ruins with forgotten stories

Step into a world where every object tells a story of a fall, a struggle, and survival... Jesse Darling, a celebrated British artist and the recipient of the Turner Prize 2023, is transforming the Palais de Tokyo from April 3rd to September 13th, 2026 into a space for an innovative exhibition. Specially conceived for this venue, the artistic installation engages directly with the building’s architecture, its history, and its geographic setting. Through a series of large-scale installations, the artist creates a visual landscape composed of humble materials, industrial debris, and familiar objects, reimagined beyond their original purpose. The exhibition fills the Parisian site with a blend of sculpture and storytelling, forging a tension between poetic expression and social critique.

The artist offers a sensory and visual environment that invites visitors to explore and move through. The materials—twisted metal barriers, display case flowers, overloaded binders, suspended objects—are drawn from everyday surroundings and transformed into distorted forms, weathered by time. These elements evoke feelings of weariness and fragility. Each installation appears to hold a latent story, hidden within the folds of its material, prompting reflection on the connections between the body, authority, and physical memory.

• To be read
• Contemporary art exhibitions to discover these days in Paris
• Palais de Tokyo: opening hours, prices, reservations... All you need to know about the Paris museum
• Top Deals in Paris and Île-de-France This Week: March 2–8, 2026

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.

This page may contain AI-assisted elements, more information here.