Yto Barrada: Bite the Hand

Yto Barrada’s third solo show with Pace in the UK will include a suite of textile works, sculptures, prints, and the London premiere of a film installation.

This exhibition also marks the first major display in London of Barrada’s textile works, all of which were dyed at The Mothership, her Tangier-based natural dye garden, eco-feminist research centre and artist residency which opened to the public early this year.

Over the last two decades Barrada has shared the breadth of her work at the intersection of history, social memory, and contemporary politics. Decomposition and materiality of colour retrace a lineage of lost histories and ways of making and thinking. Found and degraded forms register the tension between the forces of nature and colonial and capitalist systems of time management and cadence, which function as markers of discipline and productivity. For Barrada, slowness and improvisation can be forms of resistance. Through research and practice in the art and science of natural dyes, and an awareness of how representations of time shape our experience, Barrada has located and reclaimed rhythms and temporality.