French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, whose Brooklyn-based observe investigates postcolonial historic narratives by means of sculpture, set up, pictures, and textile, will symbolize France on the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, the Institut Français introduced this week.
Barrada was chosen by a range committee organized by the Institut, which manages the French pavilion beneath the steering of the Ministry for Europe and Overseas Affairs and the Ministry of Tradition. She’s going to succeed French-Caribbean conceptual artist Julien Creuzet, who represented the nation on this 12 months’s version.
Yto Barrada, “Patterns” (2005/2011), c-print, 31 1/2 inches x 31 1/2 inches (80 x 80 cm) (© Yto Barrada, photograph by Gallery Sfeir-Semler)
It gained’t be Barrada’s first time collaborating within the Biennale. For the 2007 version of the modern artwork competition, she showcased her photographic sequence Public Park—Sleepers (2006–7), wherein topics are proven resting face-down in grassy public park areas, within the central group exhibition. She additionally returned to Venice in 2011 to exhibit in a “para-pavillion” (a big site-specific set up meant to host different artworks) by Beijing artist Music Dong. Alongside private works by British artist Ryan Gander, Barrada offered The Phone Books (or the recipe ebook) (2011) — a photographic sequence providing a glimpse into her illiterate grandmother’s pocket book.
Born in 1971 in Paris to Moroccan mother and father, Barrada primarily grew up within the Moroccan port metropolis of Tangier, situated on the Straight of Gibraltar. A lot of her work is rooted in her residence metropolis, the place she tends to look at geopolitical points resembling immigration and local weather change that have an effect on residents’ every day lives. Her early sequence A Life Full Of Holes: The Strait Undertaking, which consisted of images taken from 1998 to 2004, examined the Strait of Gibraltar as a borderland passage for these touring from North Africa to Europe and the troublesome questions migrants face when selecting to depart their homelands looking for a greater life.
Yto Barrada, “Untitled (Color Wheel I)” (2024) (© Yto Barrada)
Barrada’s curiosity in border communities and cross-cultural dialogue has carried on in a lot of her initiatives. In 2006, she co-founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, which payments itself as North Africa’s first and solely cinema cultural middle and movie archive, and at present operates out of a restored Nineteen Thirties movie theater in certainly one of Tangier’s major public squares. She additionally lately based the Tangier-based experimental analysis and residency middle The Mothership, which serves as an gathering place for “pan-African eco-feminist practices” centering on textile artwork, pure dyes, and gardening.
Barrada’s work has been proven in and is at present held within the collections of establishments worldwide, together with solo exhibitions this 12 months on the Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin, the ICP, and MoMA PS1 in Lengthy Island Metropolis, which is able to stay on view within the establishment’s courtyard by means of 2026.
Earlier this 12 months in March, the artist was certainly one of a number of to withdraw work from the textile survey Unravel: The Energy and Politics of Textiles in Artwork on the Barbican in London after the humanities establishment determined to not host a lecture addressing Israel’s assaults on Palestine.
Yto Barrada, “Palm Sign” (2010), metal construction with galvanised sheet metallic and colored electrical bulbs, 100 x 61 x 20 1/16 inches (254 x 155 x 51 cm) (© Yto Barrada, photograph by Alain Kantarjian)
Yto Barrada, “Autocar [Bus], Figs. 1-4” (2004), c-prints (© Yto Barrada)