Artists: Les Ami·E·S Du Patchwork Des Noms, The Bambanani Women Group Bastille, Yann Beauvais, Black Audio Film Collective, Gregg Bordowitz, Jesse Darling, Moyra Davey, Guillaume Dustan, Nan Goldin, Félix Gonzalez-Torres, Hervé Guibert, Barbara Hammer, Derek Jarman, Michel Journiac, Zoe Leonard, Audrey Liebot, Pascal Lièvre, Santu Mofokeng, Jean-Luc Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Bruno Pelassy, Benoit Pieron, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Jimmy Robert, Regis Samba-Kounzi & Julien Devemy Marion Scemama, Lionel Soukaz & Stéphane Gerard, Georges Tony Stoll, Philippe Thomas, David Wojnarowicz, Fierce Pussy (Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, Carrie Yamaoka) & Jo-Ey Tang
Exhibition title: Exposé·es
Curated by: François Piron
Venue: Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Date: February 17 – May 14, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, ©Palais de Tokyo and the respective copyright holders
Exposé·es: people did not choose to be exposed to a virus, an illness, an epidemic.
Exposé·es: people did choose to be exposed in order to make visible this virus, this illness, this epidemic.
Amongst these people were artists. Amongst these viruses, these illnesses, was HIV/AIDS, which caused the deadliest epidemic of the past century and of the present one.
Today we live amidst epidemics that affect all of us, humans and non-humans alike. The book that inspired this exhibition, Elisabeth Lebovici’s Ce que le sida m’a fait. Art et activisme à la fin du XXe siècle [What AIDS Did to Me – Art and Activism at the End of the 20th Century] looks to sew back together subjective fragments of the deadliest epidemic of the last century: the facts, works, ideas and emotions that linked the material to the immaterial. It questions how the pulsations of desire, loss, anger, pain, memory and the archive have together made history. How they allowed for the (re)composition of interrupted genealogies, the federation of communities that produced forms and structures that still operate today, at times beyond their initial aims. How they anticipated questions of gender, class and race and the unconscious dynamic of ableism, the construction of norms around a putative state of “good health”.
In a way, this exhibition engages quite literally with the book’s title: what the AIDS epidemic does to artists, and what it does to an exhibition today. How it changes consciousness, society, creation. AIDS is here not a subject but rather as an interpretative grid through which to reconsider a broad range of artistic practices that were exposed to the epidemic. Beauty here emerges as a possible response in the face of the political and social consequences of intersecting pandemics.
Far from proposing a commemoration, the exhibition blurs temporalities and articulates a discourse in the present, inviting artists to question their own histories from the present day and reflect as to what was transmitted to them from the previous century.
Leaving behind the ostensible boundary between activism and artistic practice and focusing instead on the cathartic, therapeutic or informative effects of art, the artists in this exhibition come together around the ways in which they create and speak, in the ways in which they use their bodies and their affinities, all of which offer resources for new articulations between aesthetics and emancipation.
*Elisabeth Lebovici, Ce que le sida m’a fait. Art et activisme à la fin du XXe siècle [What AIDS has done to me], collection « Lectures maison rouge », JRP|Ringier and La maison rouge, Zurich/Paris, 2017 [new and expanded edition in 2021].
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Banbanani women’s group, Benoit Piéron – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Benoit Piéron – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Banbanani women’s group, Benoit Piéron – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Moyra Davey – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Hervé Guibert – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Felix Gonzales-Torres et George Tony Stoll – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, George Tony Stoll – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Régis Samba-Kounzi – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Régis Samba-Kounzi et Julien Devemy – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Philippe Thomas – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, yann beauvais – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Henrik Olesen – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Lili Reynaud-Dewar – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Felix Gonzales-Torres et George Tony Stoll – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Bruno Pelassy et Derek Jarman – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Bruno Pelassy et Derek Jarman – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, George Tony Stoll – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Nan Goldin – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Benoit Piéron – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Les Ami·e·s du patchwork des noms, Zoe Leonard et Jesse Darling – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Bambanani women’s group et Benoit Piéron – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Bambanani women’s group et Pascal Lièvre – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Henrik Olesen – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Fierce Pussy – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, Fierce Pussy amplified – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, yann beauvais – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
Exhibition view, Exposé·es, jesse darling – Palais de Tokyo (17/02/2023 – 14/05/2023) Photo: Aurélien Mole
