On behalf of the International Center of Photography, we invite you to join us on May 21, 2024 at 6:00 PM EST to celebrate the opening of Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Part-Time Abstractionist, a survey of 20 years of Barrada’s work in photography, will explore her investigations into photography and abstraction, beginning in the early 2000s through the present. These two modes of working are consistent throughout Barrada’s work and offer an insight into the ways she examines the social, political, and industrial structures that have and continue to shape society.
A specific focus on play, childhood, and learning will course throughout the show, including works from found-object photogram series—Bonbon (2016-17), colorful, abstract works made with candy wrappers, Blockhead Toy (2017), printed with a child’s set of blocks, and Practice Piece (2017), contact prints of found sewing lessons—as well as her work with homemade rural North African toys from the collection of the Musée du quai Branly, Paris. In acknowledgement of ICP’s school and active darkroom classes, many of these series use alternative darkroom processes, including the more recent Untitled (burning and dodging tools) (2021), which will also be on view. Curator Elisabeth Sherman has remarked, “Barrada has kept a deep commitment to photography and image making throughout her career, while always questioning the boundaries of these categories and their relationship to painting, sculpture, craft and the unexplored origins of a modernist vocabulary. These investigations, coupled with her uncovering of hidden histories and their shaping of our present, make Barrada one of the most important artists of her generation.”
Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist is the first exhibition in a new series focusing on alumni of ICP’s school. Barrada graduated from ICP’s Full-Time Documentary program in 1996. The exhibition is curated by Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at ICP.
Also on view at ICP in May: 2024 ICP Recent Graduates Exhibition, and ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845-2019.
About the Artist
Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) is a Moroccan-French artist recognized for her multidisciplinary investigations of cultural phenomena and historical narratives. Engaging with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions, Barradaʼs installations reinterpret social relationships, uncover subaltern histories, and reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalized narratives. In 2006, Barrada founded the artistrun Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first cinema cultural center, now an internationally appreciated institution. Her work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, Mass MoCA, Tate Modern, the Barbican, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Society, the Walker Art Centre, and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennales. Barrada has received multiple awards, including the Mario Merz Prize (2022); the Queen Sonja Print Award (2022); the Roy R. Neuberger Prize (2019); the Abraaj Group Art Prize, UAE (2015); Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography (2013); Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year (2011).
Image: Yto Barrada, Bonbon 4, 2016. © Yto Barrada, Courtesy Pace Gallery.