Yto Barrata - Bad Color Combos
First musing, first museum visit after coming back from Prague, and it was equivocal. I say this because it’s not an exhibition that would usually lure me in, but something about Yto Barrada did. She is an artist born in France, who grew up in Marocco and today, her art speaks to themes of personal histories, natural phenomena and culture. This interdisciplinary exhibition, titled “Bad Color Combos” plays with ideas of passage of time, education, and experimentation.
Being Gen Z, I am most drawn to her work with naturally died fabrics, that show signs of passage of time, metaphorically standing for climate change, aging, and decay. She is quite unique (to me) in her approach of using everyday materials and natural dyes to open the door to more fundamental questions. It’s a different way to engage with the topic in a media climate that is overstimulating and fear-inducing. Recently I listened to a podcast, where a curator said something along the lines of “art is like a little tear in the fabric of our everydayness that allows us to time out, be playful, and approach things from a different angle” and I think that is precisely what this exhibit is. It’s not so obvious at first sight, but allows you to find your own meaning within the artwork.
Some of her most important films were also interspersed throughout the different rooms, one of them, Trees Identification for Beginners, being most prominent and was played in a separate cinema room. While walking through a different exhibition in the Stedelijk, my friend Louiza raised the question of what can be considered art and how sometimes the accompanying text to an artwork filled with intellectual ideas seems like a justification for creating anything and calling it art. I don’t question whether or not the film is art, I’m rather pointing to the fact that until I read the description for this film I wholly misunderstood its meaning. Partly due to not being familiar with its context and partly due to its playful stop-motion technique. Just something to think about and that’s where I’ll leave it for today.