A new exhibition by Yto Barrada, recipient of the 4th edition of the Mario Merz Prize, an international award devoted to art and music.
The Fondazione Merz is pleased to present DEADHEAD, a solo exhibition by artist Yto Barrada, curated by Davide Quadrio with Giulia Turconi, in collaboration with the MAO (Museo d’Arte Orientale), from Thursday February 20 to Sunday May 18, 2025.
The exhibition’s title, DEADHEAD, refers in part to the horticultural practice of removing dead flower heads to stimulate the growth of the entire plant. Taking up the notion of reducing to the essential, the show draws on a tight selection from Yto Barrada’s artistic oeuvre, including films, sculptures, installations, textiles and prints, some of which have been specially created for the occasion.
Among the echoes, call-outs and visual experiments in the exhibition, one reference is to Barrada’s research into the pioneer colour theorist collector and philanthropist Emily Noyes Vanderpoel and her book, Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color (1902) originally intended for a female readership of dressmakers, flower painters and decorators. The author’s revolutionary colour-analysis charts converted images into geometric grids, through a systematic arrangement of the colour spectrum, which she dubbed the “music of light”.
With the series Color Analysis, which debuted at the MAO (Museo d’Arte Orientale) as part of the exhibition Trad u/i zioni d’Eurasia (2023-24), Barrada presents hand-dyed velvet grids, in which she applied Vanderpoel’s technique to transform images from Vanderpoel’s personal collection of antiques, to selected works from the MAO’s collection of Islamic art, and to a drawing by Marisa Merz. Many natural dyes used in the work were made in The Mothership, an artist-led project by Barrada envisioned as an ‘ecofeminist-campus’ for growing, making, and learning natural dyes and radical indigenous lost traditions, in her garden in Tangier.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by hopefulmonster.
Yto Barrada (Paris, 1971) is the fourth artist to receive the Mario Merz Prize, a biennial international award which celebrates Mario Merz and new talents in art and music, by commissioning an exhibition or a new musical project. In this edition, Füsun Köksal is the recipient in the music category; her concert will take place on July 2, 2025, at the Fondazione Merz.
super 8mm transferred to digital video, color, sound, 24 min
silk and rayon velvet, cotton canvas, dyes from plant, insect and mineral extracts, 110.5 × 110.5 cm, each
2-channel film installation, 16mm film, color, sound, loop, 18 min, each
Photo: Renato Ghiazza @ Fondazione Mario Merz