Sometimes the institutional implications of Cameron Rowland’s work takes years, decades, even centuries to manifest. And sometimes it takes less than a day.
As documented by their dealer Maxwell Graham on IG, Rowland’s work, Replacement (2025), replaced the French flag with the flag of Martinique on the Palais de Tokyo, as part of ECHO DELAY REVERB: art americain, pensées francophones, which opened yesterday. Today the flag was removed. A wall text reads, “Palais de Tokyo has determined that Cameron Rowland’s artwork, Replacement, could be considered illegal. As a result it is no longer included in the exhibition.”
A couple of quick thoughts: the French says it is, “n’est donc plus presentée dans l’exposition,” which, yes it’s no longer being presented. But the work—which now involves an apparently unprompted, anticipatory determination and removal—might still be part of the show.
In the absence of more information, the rest of my ruminations aren’t worth typing out. Rowland’s work typically unleashes cascades of thought by surrounding objects with profound depths of historical and contextual information. So maybe they’re trying out silence, gaps, and nondisclosure.
Until we know more, I’m left toggling between exasperation at a Palais obeying in advance, and envy for a state bureaucratic apparatus sufficiently powerful to hold institutional operations within the rule of a law.
[After some reportage later update]: Ian points to le Quotidien de l’Art’s reporting, which finds that the Palais sought a legal opinion from the Ministry of the Interior, which found that public institutions must maintain political neutrality and not fly non-French flags. Rowland, meanwhile, found lawyers arguing that the official flag of a French departement is not non-French. And that Palestinian flags flying over French city halls draw fines, while Ukrainian flags seem fine.
The kicker, though not recognized as such, is that the Palais agreed to let Rowland’s flag be installed for one day, for photographic and “performatif” purposes, “afin d’éviter d’être légalement tenu de réimprimer le catalogue de l’exposition. [in order to avoid being legally required to reprint the exhibition catalogue.]” I expect that Rowland demanded this, and if their work was excluded from the show, the Palais would be misrepresenting their involvement, and using their name and work in a misleading way. If so, Rowland seems to have rope-a-doped the Palais to make their work’s point for them.