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فير زملر غاليري Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Yto Barrada (b. 1971, lives in New York and Tangier) works with a variety of media: installation, film, photography, textiles and sculpture. Her works address social, cultural and political issues. Bad Color Combos groups works that address the relationship of mankind to nature, processes of learning and knowledge transmission, the questioning of cultural and artistic traditions, the confrontation of private and political history, and the meaning of colour and form. Central to Barrada’s work is resistance — against overcome traditions, against power structures and role models. For her, learning and play are basic prerequisites for independent thinking and critical questioning of the present. Born in Paris and raised in Tangier, on the border between Africa and Europe, cultural dialogue is at the centre of many of Barrada’s works. Often her hometown itself becomes the starting point for her artistic exploration. In 2006, Barrada founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, a film and cultural centre. Her latest project is The Mothership, an artist residency and research centre in Tangier. The plant extracts from The Mothership’s garden provided the colours for many of the artworks in this exhibition.

After Stella, 2018-22

In the After Stella series (2018–22), Barrada addresses the history of artistic abstraction, which developed internationally and was shaped by various cultural influences. Barrada especially criticises the process of appropriating Moroccan culture as a source of inspiration for Western art and architectural history. She refers to the geometric colour field paintings of Frank Stella (*1936) created in the mid-1960s, whose titles are derived from the names of Moroccan cities. For Barrada, neither the industrial acrylic paints used, nor the names of the works do justice to their cultural origins, which lie in Moroccan ornamentation and textile art. With her series After Stella, she makes these origins visible. The works are thus a contradiction to the Western- influenced art history. Another point of reference are the works of the painters Mohamed Chebâa (1935–2013), Farid Belkahia (1934–2014) and Mohammed Melehi (1936–2020), who paved the way for artistic modernism in North Africa in the 1960s as founders of the Casablanca School. In their abstract works, they take up motifs and materials from popular, local art forms.

The Fabric Book, 2014-2022

As a collector of textiles, Barrada has been researching many facets of fabric history for many years: from materials and techniques to local traditions and international trade routes. Barrada also explores the art and science of dyeing, still considered by many to be “women’s work”, and its evolution from natural to highly toxic synthetic processes.

The velvet collages, made of different sized and dyed velvets, are inspired by historical colour sample books used in the textile dyeing industry. Different colour intensities and shades are created by using different dyes and mordants, such as plant, insect or mineral secretions. Barrada’s interest lies both in the historical dyeing processes and the extraction of natural dyes as well as in the effect of the colours produced themselves, which in combination with each other and through the changing of light constantly produce new optical variations.

Iris tingitana, 2019
Untitled (stinking iris), 2020

Barrada repeatedly picks up motifs in her works that have a connection with her hometown Tangier. The blue-violet, Moroccan Iris tingitana (Latin for “Tangier iris”, 2019) is considered the city’s landmark. Because of its bright flowers, it was used as a dye for textiles. For Barrada, the Tangier iris is a symbol of resistance and assertiveness, as it also grows in inhospitable places: in wasteland, on the city boundary and on construction sites. However, due to the changed climatic conditions and the altered urban structure caused by increasing tourism, the flower has been threatened with extinction for the past years. In the exhibition, the flower can be found in several places, as a small-sized collage made of cardboard and cast in bronze as part of an installation in the exhibition.

Tree Identification for Beginners, 2018

Tree Identification for Beginners (2018) is set at the intersection of political history and family history. In the summer of 1966, Barrada’s mother, Mounira Bouzid, was one of 54 African students who participated in the exchange programme “Operation Crossroads Africa”. The trip to the USA, sponsored by the State Department, was intended to promote cultural understanding. The film examines this staged encounter between North America and Africa and the burgeoning spirit of disobedience and resistance that was to shape an entire generation with the Black Power and Anti-Vietnam War movements. The report is accompanied by a stop-motion animation of colourful Montessori learning materials and Moroccan toys. For Barrada, learning and the acquisition of knowledge are the basic prerequisites for resistance against outdated thought patterns and a means of social change. The film is based on a live performance that premiered in New York in 2017.

Ways to baffle the wind, 2022

The installation’s title Ways to baffle the wind (2022) is taken from an essay of the same name published in 1952 in the American lifestyle magazine Sunset Patio Book. The text presents various strategies to prevent an unwanted draught on patios and verandas. As a first step, it recommends testing wind strength and direction with an apparatus made of freely hanging cotton balls. By recreating this “wind machine” in the exhibition space, Yto Barrada playfully refers to man’s futile attempts to regulate natural forces. How much can we control the wind or specifically influence the climate?

Land and Water, 2019

The series of Land and Water (2019) is based on educational material. Barrada uses four pairs of images to illustrate the reciprocal relationship between land and water forms: Isthmus and Canal, Cape and Bay, Peninsula and Gulf, Island and Lake, Archipelago and Lake District. Playfully, the artist creates an awareness of environmental features by the use of these objects. For Barrada, geographical borders are closely linked to social and political questions of cultural identity, migration and international exchange.

Continental Drift, 2021

In Continental Drift (2021), Barrada combines private and political history to create a cinematic view of her hometown Tangier on the border between Africa and Europe. The film is a collage of Super 8 footage shot in various places. It also features Barrada’s artist residence The Mothership and the Cinémathèque de Tangier, the city’s art house and cultural centre she founded in 2006. The film also introduces some of Tangier’s extraordinary personalities, such as street cleaners, farmers, guides in the historic city centre, and Jerry B., a British collector of magic lantern slides and fossils, whose voice is heard throughout the film.

Plan for a Dye Garden, 2019

The seemingly abstract compositions in the series Plan for a Dye Garden (2019) represent floor plans for a botanical garden Barrada created around her cultural centre The Mothership. The textiles, like almost all the textile works in the exhibition, were dyed with plant extracts from this garden.

Untitled (After Stella Large II) - Four Times Casablanca I & II (Centrifuge), 2020
Practice Piece (Sewing Exercise), 2019

At first glance, the large grey textile works and photographs seem reminiscent of modern abstract painting, such as Frank Stella’s Black Paintings (1958–1960). The photos, however, are made of educational material designed to practice sewing lines and patterns without thread. In this series, Barrada refers to the roots of artistic abstraction that lie in craft techniques and artisanal patterns. The poster listing “bad colour combos” was designed in collaboration with Barrada’s daughter Tamo. It refers to the endeavour to find rules for a world in which the individual has no power and, through these rules, to regain control of a world of one’s own.

The power of two or three suns, 2020

The power of two or three suns (2020) also deals with man’s confrontation with the forces of nature. The film was shot in an industrial laboratory where the durability of various materials for mass production is tested. Barrada places fabrics in a solar simulation chamber where they are irradiated with xenon lamps that have the “power of two or three suns”. The film recalls the industrial aesthetics of 20th century modernism. Back then, new technology was welcomed as a sign of progress and was also thematised in artistic works. Today, this kind of representation stimulates reflection on issues such as climate change and the transience of resources.

Tamo's Raft (Le radeau de Tamo), 2021
Pink Tower, 2020
Leaf Forms Puzzle, 2021

Do we have to carry on traditions without criticism? How can we learn differently and in a playful way? These questions are repeatedly at the centre of Yto Barrada’s artistic work. Play often appears as a form of resistance and self-empowerment. Barrada often draws inspiration from historical education models. The pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852) pointed out the importance of free play and contact with nature and developed educational play materials from simple geometric shapes. The exhibition brings together several works that combine educational teaching materials with an artistic approach, such as Tamo's Raft (Le radeau de Tamo) (2021), Pink Tower (Sensorial Education Toy, 2020) and the Leaf Forms Puzzle (2021). At the invitation of Yto Barrada, the exhibition also features works by artists Elodie Pong (*1966) and Bettina Grossman (1924–2021), with whom she shares a long-standing artistic interest.

Grossman’s exploration of geometry and seriality takes place in various forms of expression, including sculpture, photography and film. After a devastating fire destroyed her studio in 1970, Grossman moved to the Hotel Chelsea in New York. Here she lived and worked in relative seclusion for many years, rigorously creating a new body of work. After meeting Grossman through filmmaker Corinne van der Borch, Barrada spent the last three years working on the artist’s archive and the first book about her work.

Pong is an artist and filmmaker with a multidisciplinary practice. Her modular, multi-media installations are informed by personal histories, memories and science, and question systems of power. The ambiguity of the sculpture’s title Die12 (2022) is also reflected in the materiality of the work. The cubes were made of cobblestones and evoke associations with riots and unrest.

Wallpaper, 2023
Tangier Island Wall, 2022

The patterns of the Wallpaper (2023) were designed by Yto Barrada specifically for the exhibition. They are based on ornaments used for endpapers of books. Barrada discovered these books in the library of the Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902–1988). In Barrada’s work, the otherwise concealed decorations are transformed into a clearly visible part of the Kunsthalle’s architecture.

The minimalist sculpture Tangier Island Wall (2022), constructed from crab traps, forms a wall against the outside space. The work refers to the fate of Tangier Island: the island off the coast of Virginia (USA) has lost more than half of its land mass in recent years due to the consequences of climate change. At the same time, the changing climatic conditions are causing a decline in crab fishing yields. However, this is the economic basis for the 378 inhabitants. Barrada’s artificial dike of crab traps becomes a symbol of man’s struggle against the forces of nature, but also a memorial to the consequences of human intervention in nature.

Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer