Berlin’s Deutsche Guggenheim will be presenting an eclectic selection of works from their Artist of the Year 2011, Yto Barrada, in an exhibition entitled Riffs until June 19.
Born into a Moroccan family in France in 1971, the artist’s work explores the postcolonial city where she was raised, Tangiers. The series A Life Full of Holes: The Strait Project, developed over six years, studies the sociopolitical situation of Tangiers, focusing on the waiting that seems to dominate daily life, “imprisoned” on the African border by the Gibraltar Strait ever since the application of the Schengen agreement. Factories, walls with posters, worksites under construction, boys playing, and people continuously turning their backs to the camera: they are the sparse, unsophisticated scenes that make up the project.

The Belvedere series shows people looking out to the sea that separates them from Europe, an echo of classical marines but also the hopes and desires of those photographed. Iris Tingitana and Red Walls focus on the major changes provoked by the arrival of mass tourism in Tangiers and the paradoxical life of the cities inhabitants, stuck in a city marred by the consequences of tourism, and the construction industry, the disappearance of natural zones and the homogeneity of contemporary architecture. It is through these detailed, juxtaposed fragments that Barrada tells of the changes, contrasting between natural landscapes and the city, the remains of knocked down buildings and the construction sites heralding the future cityscape.

Sebastián Messina

Yto Barrada: Riffs

Through June 19

Deutsche Guggenheim
Unter den Linden 13/15
10117 Berlin