Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to announce that Mary Kelly's Beirut (1970), 2017, is included in the exhibition ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Opening today, 22 October 2025, and running until 15 February 2026, the Artistic Direction of the exhibition was led by Naomi Beckwith, working closely with curators James Horton, Amandine Nana and François Piron. For the opening two days, access will be by free admission.
ECHO DELAY REVERB brings together a history of transatlantic exchanges of ideas and artistic forms, featuring works by around sixty artists across a diverse range of mediums. It examines how art in the United States helped spark the revolutionary thinking of intellectuals, activists, and poets who broke traditional boundaries and radically shifted worldviews — figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, Jean Genet, Aimé Césaire, Jacques Lacan, Monique Wittig, Pierre Bourdieu, and Edouard Glissant. The way their work was received and interpreted in the U.S. gave rise to unexpected artistic forms, offering new tools for critiquing institutions—both cultural and societal. In this context, theory becomes a means of challenging established social, aesthetic, and linguistic conventions, opening up alternative ways of seeing and engaging with the world.
In November 2025, Mary Kelly will have her fourth solo exhibition, We don’t want to set the world on fire, with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, which explores the role of protest in her work and its power to effect change.
ECHO DELAY REVERB brings together a history of transatlantic exchanges of ideas and artistic forms, featuring works by around sixty artists across a diverse range of mediums. It examines how art in the United States helped spark the revolutionary thinking of intellectuals, activists, and poets who broke traditional boundaries and radically shifted worldviews — figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, Jean Genet, Aimé Césaire, Jacques Lacan, Monique Wittig, Pierre Bourdieu, and Edouard Glissant. The way their work was received and interpreted in the U.S. gave rise to unexpected artistic forms, offering new tools for critiquing institutions—both cultural and societal. In this context, theory becomes a means of challenging established social, aesthetic, and linguistic conventions, opening up alternative ways of seeing and engaging with the world.
In November 2025, Mary Kelly will have her fourth solo exhibition, We don’t want to set the world on fire, with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, which explores the role of protest in her work and its power to effect change.
22 October 2025
