“When I moved from Tangier to New York in 2012, my galleries were a bit concerned: what would I have to say, once I no longer lived atop the source of all my preoccupations? I discovered there was Another Tangier. An island in Chesapeake bay of Virginia, just a few hours drive from NYC… and a little research revealed that not only did this Tangier have a particular name – it was, like the Moroccan version, one of the more interesting places on earth.
The population of around 500 mostly subsist from soft-shell crabs and tourism. When I visited though, the most striking aspect of Tangier was that I couldn’t understand anything they said.
This insular culture has preserved a heirloom variety of British-English, spiced with the twang of the American South, rendered even more impenetrable by a local idiomatic patois. An unattractive person “ain’t hard favored;” to a smelly person, you might say “Wait a bit, you’re sweet!” And best of all, of a woman who, like me, talks a lot, Tangiermen would say: “She could talk a flood tide down.”
Goodman Gallery is pleased to present, She Could Talk a Flood Tide Down, Yto Barrada’s first solo exhibition in Johannesburg and the first with the gallery. 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.
Artworks
Create a Goodman Gallery account to view pricing of available artworks and access purchasing.
The series of photographs, Plumber Assemblage, Fig.1 - 10, Tangier (2014) considers the romanticism attached to objects characterized as ‘foreign’ and through this process, examines how value is assigned. Found objects such as pipes, faucets, and spigots, which are reused in assemblages by plumbers to advertise their services, are placed outside of their typical context in poses that reconfigure their meaning.
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.”
Land and Water Forms is a series of paintings inspired by Montessori school practices, used to teach children about geography through visual inversion. In the works, landforms are paired and transposed — island/lake, archipelago/lake system, isthmus/canal —drawing attention to the interconnections between physical structures and substances of the earth.
Through humour, works such as Mnemonic Phrases (2019) explore mnemonic devices beyond their linguistic function, placing them within the rhythm of history where found sentences, much like found objects, perform themselves. Fragments of materials interact with each other as self-made tools that inspire new techniques — for instance, cardboard cutouts from the collaged works in Grinding Teeth (2020) are often used as paint brushes to create other paintings, suggesting synchronicity across mediums.
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.
Artist Bio
Yto Barrada (Moroccan, French, b.1971, Paris) is recognized 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.
Barrada arrived at her artist practice through studies of history and political science, particularly in the negotiation of political and personal experiences. Her first series of photographs, 'A Life Full of Holes,' (1998–2004), used the Strait of Gibraltar as a site of inquiry, examining its status as a border between North Africa and Europe and its impact on the residents of Tangier.
Much of Barrada’s work has since focused on borderlands, microhistories, and autonomous agency within a political landscape. Interested in developing a platform for cross-cultural dialogue and exchange, she founded Cinémathèque de Tanger in 2006. North Africa’s first and only repertory cinema and archive, the Cinémathèque operates out of a restored 1930s theater known as the Cinema Rif, located in one of the city’s main squares.
In keeping with her exploration of identity, economics, and notions of authenticity, Barrada’s 'Faux Guide,' presented at Pace London (2015), focused on the fossil and mineral trade as an aspect of cultural production. Using museum collection practices as conceptual strategies, the artist’s multifaceted exhibition reflected on acts of subversion within tourist economies. Her first exhibition with Pace in New York, 'How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself' (2018), included a survey of the artist’s practice and included her installation and film essay, Tree Identification for Beginners, which revisited her mother’s 1966 trip to the United States on a State Department-sponsored travel program.
Informed by postcolonial thought and socio-political concerns, Barrada’s interests range from the tensions around borders, immigration, and tourism to the urban landscape, and from children’s toys to botany and paleontology. Her practice encompasses photography, film, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and publishing, while her installations often comprise both original work and found objects.
Within the interlinked logic of Barrada’s work lie secrets, pleasures, and a celebration of strategies of resistance to domination.
Barrada’s work has been exhibited at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (2011); Tate Modern, London (2011); Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2013); The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2021); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021); and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022). In 2007, Barrada was selected to participate in the Venice Biennale. The artist has received multiple awards, including the Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year (2011); the Abraaj Group Art Prize, UAE (2015); the Roy R. Neuberger Prize (2019); Mario Merz Prize (2022); Queen Sonja Print Award (2022), and Soros Arts Fellowship (2023). Works by Barrada are held in public collections worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; International Center of Photography, New York; Kunsthalle Basel; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among others.
