Yto Barrada-Gallery Exhibition - Part 06

Barrada’s work, After Stella (Sidi Ifni II), continues her series of After Stella textiles, which riff on Frank Stella’s series of paintings from 1964–65, inspired in part by, and named after, the Moroccan cities he visited on his honeymoon. Inverting the other works in the series, After Stella (Sidi Ifni II), is displayed with the back of the textile facing out. We see the construction of the piece, with pencil notes and exposed seams. Barrada recalls artist Simon Nicholson’s 1971 essay in Landscape Architecture journal, “How NOT to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts,” which describes children’s experience of a restricted world: “they cannot play with building and making things, or play with fluids, water, fire or living objects, and all the things that satisfy one’s curiosity and give us the pleasure that results from discovery and invention.” This reversal at once affirms the value of rendering visible the “loose parts” that make up the art object, at the same time that it disrupts the seamless surfaces often found in the institutional display of art.