Background
Yto Barrada is the daughter of French journalist Hamid Barrada.
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Yto Barrada
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied history and political science at the Sorbonne in Paris and photography at the International Centre of Photography, New New York
Career
Her Strait Project, begun in 1998, describes the static and transitory life of her hometown, the border city facing Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar. Her photographs capture a city tortured by dreams very different from those in tourist brochures, where thousands of immigrants attempt to make the illegal and perilous journey across the Strait. Her recent work, Iris Tingitana, follows a different border, examining the interstices where the botanical landscape meets the urban, and Flowers, extending her inquiry to the fast-growing edges of the city, where the monocultural vision of planners and developers threatens to homogenize landscape and human lives.
Recent exhibitions of photography and video include Witte de With (Rotterdam), Fundaciò Tàpies (Barcelona), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Haus der Kunst (Munich), the Kitchen (New York), the MoMA (San Francisco and New York), Bonner Kunstverein, Modern Art Oxford, and Centre Pompidou, the 2007 and 2011Venice Biennale "The world belongs to you at the Pallazio Grassi.
Her book, A Life Full of Holes – The Strait Project, was published by Autograph ABP in 2006. In 2011, she was awarded Artist of the year 2011 by the Deutsche Bank and in April 2011, she had a solo exhibition untitled Riffs at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2011), that was scheduled to open in September in Wiels, Bruxelles, and next June in Ikon, Birmingham.
The title of her book is "borrowed" from A Life Full of Holes as told by Larbi Layachi (aka Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi) and translated in English by Paul Bowles. Copyright 1982 by Larbi Layachi.
She has recently published "RIFFS" with Hatze Kantz and the limited edition A Guide to Trees for Governors and Gardeners with the Deutsche Gugenheim.
A monograph on her work was published by JRP Ringier in 2013, with texts from Marie Muracciole, Juan Goytisolo, and a photographic essay by Jean-François Chevrier.
Achievements
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Louisiana courte échelle (ou l’échelle des voleurs) – Studio Fotokino, Marseille, 2013 Mobilier Urbain – The Pace Gallery, London – 2012 Riffs – Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin – 2011 Women Artists in the Collections of the National Modern Art Museum: ellescentrepompidou – 2011 Play – Galerie Sfeir Semler, Beyrouth – 2010 Uneven Geographies – Nottingham Contemporary – 2010.
Membership
She is also a member of the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation.
