Melvin Edwards

As part of the carte blanche invitation extended to Naomi Beckwith, the Palais de Tokyo is presenting a major retrospective dedicated to sculptor Melvin Edwards—an influential figure in the history of contemporary American art.

Edwards is best known for his large-scale abstract sculptures, site-specific barbed-wire installations, the use and depiction of chains, and his Lynch Fragments—a series of wall-mounted assemblages of welded industrial objects and materials he began in 1963. Developing his practice during the Civil Rights Movement, Edwards’ choice of materials reflects on American cultural memory and socioeconomic history.

His sculptures often serve as tributes and intimate monuments, linking the past and present of the Black Atlantic. Both physical and subtle, radical and intricate, they engage in a dialogue of concepts and materials, drawing on linguistics, architecture, and an anthropological reflection on ironwork that repositions Africa as a foundational site of industrial development.

Deeply infused with poetry and jazz, Edwards’ work reflects his relationships with poets such as Léon-Gontran Damas, whom he met in 1969 in New York; Édouard Glissant, whom he met in Paris in the early 1980s; and Jayne Cortez, with whom he collaborated for many years on illustrations for her books. The collaborative dimension of Edwards’ printed works is emphasised in the exhibition, alongside his role in establishing a printmaking workshop in Dakar in the late 1990s.