Yto Barrada

Born in Paris to Moroccan parents, Yto Barrada now lives between New York and Tangier. This Moroccan city quickly becomes the very subject of the artist’s work, who, like an anthropologist, denounces with her works a form of loss of cultural identity in contemporary Morocco while seeking to highlight elements of social connection. Barrada’s work has always drawn upon botany, as demonstrated in the 2013 monograph A Modest Proposal, a nod to Ed Ruscha, which brings together drawings, texts, and photographs as an inventory of the types of palm trees found in Moroccan territory. These trees remain one of the artist’s leitmotifs, as seen in the 2010 sculpture Palm Sign, where a monumental metal palm tree painted in the colors of Tangier taxis appears weathered by time, a symbol of another era that colorful light bulbs fail to revive. The work, presented with visible stripes and empty light bulb sockets, evokes a picturesque imagery characteristic of the country and becomes the emblem of obsolete exoticism.