The Johannesburg based Goodman Gallery has announced plans to present Moroccan- French artist Yto Barranda’s She Could Talk a Flood Tide Down exhibition in the very near future. The exhibition marks a first for both parties being Barrada’s first solo exhibition in Johannesburg and the first with the gallery.
A Glimpse Into Yto Barrada’s Salient Milestones
The Parisian native is most recognised for her multidisciplinary investigations of cultural phenomena and historical narratives. Engaging with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions, Barrada’s installations reinterpret social relationships, uncover subaltern histories, and reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalized narratives.
In 2006, Barrada co-founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, the first art house theater to celebrate local and international cinema in Tangier.
Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, MoMA, The Met, the Renaissance Society, the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennales. Barrada has received multiple awards, including the Roy R. Neuberger Prize (2019); the Tiger Award for Best Short Film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2016); the Abraaj Group Art Prize, UAE (2015); Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography (2013); and Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year (2011).
What To Expect From The “She Could Talk A Flood Down” Exhibition
By bringing together diverse projects, the exhibition highlights Barrada’s long-established interest in alternative forms of learning, such as mnemonics and spaces of play, as a valuable source of knowledge. The exhibition coincides with Barrada’s solo presentation at The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind, on view until July 2023.
She Could Talk a Flood Tide Down engages different aspects of language and play — and through humour allows for deeper reflection and a closer reading of objects, materials and processes. The exhibition includes the much-anticipated film Continental Drift (2021). The film-collage assembles Super 8mm film diaries, footage taken over eight years across the US and Morocco, including the rituals of the Grand Socco plaza, home of the Cinematheque de Tanger, the arthouse and cultural center which Barrada founded in 2006.
The film also offers a first glimpse of The Mothership, a forest garden and botanical garden of dye plants, and artist residency, founded by the artist. Continental Drift also introduces Tangier characters like the Public Writer; and, as narrator of sorts, an english autodidact who collects Magic Lantern slides and channels local history. In a brief, chilling sequence, the camera has a close encounter with the aging thug who ‘disappeared” Barrada’s own grandfather in the 1950’s.
The intersection of cinema and the archive, themes that often recur in her practice, bring attention to the rigidity of zones and territories while also considering the struggles of sovereignty and migratory flows.
Within the exhibition, Barrada considers the history of place through a reflection on water and land — land reshaped by water; sinking islands and cities at risk of disappearing — through the lens of children’s participation in the construction of the world, inspired by artist Simon Nicholson’s 1971 anti-elitist essay, “How NOT to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts.”
Salient to Barrada’s practice are concepts of pleasure, discovery and analysis, which are formulated through key works that experiment with materials (rust, cotton, natural dyes) and traditional processes. Her methodology is influenced by her background in history and political science. By using visual, textual and sculptural relics, the exhibition finds points of anchorage in historical narrative and aesthetic imagination and simultaneously condenses and stretches the frame of time.
