What’s happening at Palais de Tokyo?
Ever wondered what happens when art decides to break all the rules? Barontini inverts colonial power by sampling European paintings to reclaim Caribbean revolutionary history. The “Joie Collective” dismantles museum hierarchy with structures governed by collective decisions. RAMMELLZEE’s “Gothic Futurism” declares war on standard language itself, presenting graffiti as intellectual resistance through weaponized letters constructed from urban debris.
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Palais de Tokyo isn’t playing it safe. At a time when many museums retreat into crowd-pleasing blockbusters, this Parisian art institution has mounted three simultaneous exhibitions that challenge not just artistic conventions, but the very systems that determine whose stories get told and how. The central question haunting these galleries: Can art function as a legitimate weapon in cultural resistance?
Raphael Barontini in “Somewhere in the Night, People Dance,” transforms the museum’s west wing through textile interventions that center Caribbean and specifically Haitian revolutionary history. By sampling elements from European classical paintings and rendering historical figures in fabrics associated with both European luxury and Caribbean carnival traditions, Barontini creates visual documents that exist outside conventional categorization.
What makes this work pointed is how it mimics colonial appropriation but inverts the power dynamic. Just as European powers extracted resources from the Caribbean while imposing cultural narratives, Barontini extracts visual elements from European art historical traditions and repurposes them to serve Caribbean historical reclamation. This strategy transforms appropriation from exploitation to liberation.
The “Joie Collective” takes over the central pavilion, effectively hijacking the museum’s traditional function as a space for passive viewing. Visitors navigate through a constantly evolving environment where the boundaries between creator and audience deliberately blur. A series of modular structures can be reconfigured throughout the exhibition’s run, allowing the space to transform in response to collective decisions rather than curatorial dictates.
By establishing an alternative governance structure within the institution—where decisions emerge through collective processes rather than hierarchical ones—they expose the typically invisible power dynamics that shape cultural experiences. This isn’t merely participatory art, it’s a functional demonstration of how institutions might operate under different organizational principles.
And RAMMELLZEE’s “ALPHABETA SIGMA” exhibition declares war on language itself. This artist developed a comprehensive philosophical system called “Gothic Futurism” that positioned standard language as a tool of oppression and proposed graffiti as armed resistance.
The exhibition centers on his extraordinary “Letter Racers” and masked “Garbage Gods” figures—sculptural entities constructed from found materials that embody letters transformed into weapons. By referencing medieval monks who elaborated letterforms in illuminated manuscripts, RAMMELLZEE positioned street artists as continuing a centuries-long tradition of challenging those who control written language, transforming what authorities dismissed as vandalism into a sophisticated intellectual project.
Together, these three exhibitions create a comprehensive challenge to cultural power structures—targeting historical narratives (Barontini), institutional frameworks (Joie Collective), and linguistic systems (RAMMELLZEE). This curatorial strategy positions the museum itself as a contested space rather than a neutral container.
By hosting challenges to the systems that traditionally legitimize art institutions, Palais de Tokyo demonstrates rare institutional self-awareness. These exhibitions maintain their disruptive potential precisely because they operate within the systems they critique, creating productive tension that forces visitors to question not just what art shows, but what it can do in the world.
Address:
Palais de Tokyo
13 Av. du Président Wilson
75116 Paris
