Known as The Queen-Mother of Gnarly, Cheryl Marie Wade (1948 –2013) developed a body of work that brought together poems, one-woman-shows and songs. Her practice emerged in women’s theater groups, before evolving into shows in front of increasingly larger audiences. Her performances were then distributed on VHS tapes sold by mail order when her health no longer allowed her to perform on stage.

Within the community of disabled artists that developed in Berkeley, California in the late 1980s, she and others reclaimed the insult cripple to form the word crip. Together, they distanced disability from medical discourse and affirmed it as a sensitive and shared experience of the world.

As part of a documentary intended for French television, director and disability activist Diane Maroger met Cheryl Marie Wade, selected her poems, and made numerous trips to Berkeley in the early 2000s. This work resulted in dozens of hours of footage documenting the disabled community in California, before the project was abandoned by the producer.

Twenty-five years later, this exhibition serves as a post-production room for reviewing the performances and interviews of Cheryl Marie Wade, whose work had previously remained marginal to the art world.

These images are juxtaposed with works by contemporary artists who have direct or metaphorical links to the Berkeley crip scene. The connections that emerge are as much possibilities for films as they are reflections on what makes certain works accessible or inaccessible to us.

June 18–20, 2026

Echoing the themes of the exhibition, in June 2026 the Palais de Tokyo will host a festival of poetry and performances dedicated to the contemporary crip scene.