Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada (born 1971, lives in New York and Tangier) works in a variety of media: installation, film, photography, textiles, and sculpture. In her works she addresses social, cultural and political issues.
Bad Color Combos features works that negotiate man’s relationship to nature, processes of learning and knowledge transmission, the questioning of cultural and artistic traditions, the examination of private and political history, and the meaning of color and form. Central to Barrada’s work is resistance – against traditions, against power structures and role models. Learning and play are for her basic prerequisites to be able to work independently.
Thinking and critical questioning of the present.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Kunststiftung NRW and the Kulturstiftung pro Bielefeld.

Born in Paris and raised in Tangier, on the border between Africa and Europe, cultural dialogue is at the heart of many of Barrada’s works. Not infrequently, her hometown itself becomes the starting point for her artistic exploration. In 2006, Barrada founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first film and cultural center. Her latest project is The Mothership, artist residency and research center in Tangier. Plant extracts from The Mothership’s garden provided the colors for many of the artworks in this exhibit.

This exhibition presents three of Barrada’s most important films: Tree Identification for Beginners (2017), The Power of Two or Three Suns (2020), and Continental Drift (2022).

In addition to her socio-political concerns, Yto Barrada’s artistic practice is based on the idea of community, artistic kinship, and collaboration with friends* and family.

Yto Barrada was born in 1971, grew up in Tangier, Morocco, and studied history and political science at the Sorbonne in Paris. She now lives and works between New York and Tangier. Yto Barrada has been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the 2022 Mario Merz Prize, Turin. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), Renaissance Society (Chicago), Kulturinstituut Melly (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2011.