Yto Barrada to represent France at La Biennale di Venezia in 2026
Published on 19 November 2024
After a selection commission organized by the Institut français, Yto Barrada has been chosen to represent France at the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in 2026. The commission, chaired by Claire Le Restif, Director of the Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - le Crédac, was chosen by Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture. The artist has chosen Myriam Ben Salah, Director and Chief Curator of the Renaissance Society in Chicago, to curate his exhibition.
The jury chose Yto Barrada "for her multidisciplinary practice, which federates diverse artistic and social communities in search of a new utopia. An iconoclastic researcher, a total artist without borders, Yto Barrada reinvents "social sculpture" in the light of alternative pedagogies and transforms the canons of modernism into a plural garden. From Paris to Tangiers, via New York, she draws a singular cartography that gathers new voices - invisible, fragile, historic or forgotten - to pass on their stories. So many reasons that led the jury to invite Yto Barrada to unfold her worlds in the space of the French Pavilion and share them with Venice Biennale audiences."
More about the artist
Born in Paris in 1971, Yto Barrada is a French-Moroccan artist who lives and works between New York and Tangiers. She studied history and political science at the Sorbonne, then photography in New York. For the past 25 years, she has deployed a multidisciplinary practice - installation, film, photography, sculpture, textiles and publishing - through long-term projects that tackle issues as diverse as the place of play in alternative pedagogies, the instrumentalization of botany in urban politics, the international trafficking of dinosaur fossils, colonial anthropology, pan-Africanism or cultural policies during the Cold War.
Exploring cultural facts, natural processes and historical narratives simultaneously, Yto Barrada's work pays particular attention to the transmission of local know-how, the circulation of aesthetic forms and strategies of social disobedience. Highlighting the idea of community, artistic kinship and collaboration with friends and family, they often involve a re-reading of the modernist artistic avant-gardes.
Yto Barrada co-founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger in 2006. She also created The Mothership, a research and residency center based around a garden of dye plants that she has been cultivating for ten years. The Mothership is a gathering place for artists, gardeners and thinkers who claim a feminist, ecological and playful approach to creation and the transmission of knowledge.
Yto Barrada's work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions at Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006); Renaissance Society, Chicago (2011); Tate Modern, London (2011); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, (2013); Carré d'Art, Nîmes (2015); Barbican Centre, London (2018) ; MASS MoCA North Adams, Massachusetts (2021); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022); Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2023); Césure - Plateau urbain as part of the Festival d'Automne (2023); MoMA PS1, New York (2024), among others. She has also participated in numerous biennales, including Venice (2007, 2011), Sharjah (2011), Istanbul (2013), Marrakech (2016), Gwangju (2018) and Whitney (2022).
Yto Barrada's works are included in public collections worldwide, including those of Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New-York), Tate Modern (London), Kunsthalle Basel, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) Reina Sofia (Madrid), Mathaf (Doha) and Mumok (Vienna), among others.
Among her honors, the artist was named Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year in 2011. She has also been awarded the Peabody Museum (Harvard University) Fellowship in 2013-2014, the Soros Arts Fellowship in 2023 and received numerous awards, including the Abraaj Group Art Prize in 2015, the Roy R. Neuberger Prize in 2019, the Mario Merz Prize and the Queen Sonja Print Award in 2022.
She is represented by Polaris Gallery (Paris), Sfeir-Semler Gallery (Beirut, Hamburg) and Pace Gallery (New York, London, Seoul, Hong Kong, Geneva, Los Angeles, Tokyo).
Myriam Ben Salah, exhibition curator
Yto Barrada has chosen Myriam Ben Salah to curate his exhibition. Yto Barrada explains the reasons for her choice as follows:"I am delighted that Myriam Ben Salah has agreed to curate the French Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2026, as she is a singular voice who has inspired me for many years. From her early experiences at the Palais de Tokyo and as head of Kaleidoscope magazine, to co-organizing the Made in L.A. biennial, to directing the Renaissance Society in Chicago, she has consistently championed artists of different generations, while setting bold proposals in concrete contexts. Artists regard her as a trusted ally, and institutions rely on her to organize exhibitions that are committed and demanding. Her work as a curator, her texts and her public statements bear witness to a way of thinking that is deeply focused on artists, rooted in rigor and integrity."
Myriam Ben Salah is a Franco-Tunisian curator. She lived and worked in Paris from 2003 to 2020. Since 2020, she has been director and chief curator of the Renaissance Society in Chicago, where she has organized solo exhibitions by Alex Ayed, Neïl Beloufa, Meriem Bennani, Aria Dean, Dala Nasser, Diane Severin Nguyen, Lydia Ourahmane, Jordan Strafer and Wakaliga Uganda, among others. In 2020, she co-organized the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Previously, she was editor-in-chief of Kaleidoscope magazine (2016-2020) and in charge of special projects as well as cultural programming at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2009-2016). In 2018, she was guest curator of the 10th edition of the Abraaj Group Art Prize in Dubai, where she collaborated with artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan. She sits on the scientific committee of the MUDAM (Luxembourg) as well as the production and acquisition committee of the Hartwig Art Production / Collection Fund.
"It's a privilege to collaborate with Yto. Her poetic, incisive eye challenges everything we too often take for granted in terms of geographies, artistic canons and historical perspectives. She is an inexhaustible source of micro-histories, which she approaches with disarming precision. Her intellectual generosity is evident in the many initiatives she has launched in parallel with her practice - from the Cinémathèque de Tanger to a dye garden, to highlighting the archives of artist Bettina. I'm convinced that this Pavilion will transform our approach to culture. Our paths are strikingly similar: we both come from families shaped by political history, trade union struggles and exile, between North Africa, France and, later, the United States. It's this shared point of view that fuels the convergence of our visions today." Myriam Ben Salah, on her future collaboration with Yto Barrada.
The French Pavilion
The French Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia is implemented by the French Institute, under the aegis of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture. For its 61st edition, the Pavilion will welcome Yto Barrada's project and the public in a completely renovated space after a year of works and an edition hors-les-murs of the Biennale d'architecture 2025. This restoration project, financed by France, is steered by the Direction des Immeubles et de la Logistique (DIL) of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs via its Service des Travaux et Bâtiments Françaises en Italie (STBI), in coordination with the French Embassy in Italy. The works, which will start in January 2025 and last 15 months, aim to improve the building's energy performance, offer visitors a better reception and modernize existing facilities. Since December 2021, studies for this project have been entrusted to Venetian architect Donata Cherido.
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