After Stella, 2018

Yto Barrada's textile works After Stella reference Frank Stella’s series of fluorescent paintings, inspired in part by Moroccan cities. Barrada’s textiles expand the frame of reference for these patterns and motifs, transposing the colors and forms of Stella’s paintings using dyes made in her studio from plants and insects. These new textile works are equally inspired by the painters Mohamed Chebaa, Farid Belkahia, and Mohammed Melehi, founders of the Casablanca School in the 1960s, who paved the way for a North African modernism whose abstraction embraced the motifs and materials of popular, local art forms.