Ways to Baffle the Wind features new and recent work by French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada and includes sculpture, textile, films, and games assembled to model, parody, and learn from attempts to regulate and organize nature. The exhibition is a collaboration between MASS MoCA and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought in New Orleans, and foregrounds Barrada’s film, Tree Identification for Beginners, researched in the archives of Amistad Research Center, also in New Orleans.

Learn More:
“Weather and Wordplay: Yto Barrada Interviewed by Cassie Packard,” Bomb Magazine, April 2022

Download a pdf of the gallery guide here.

About the Artist
Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) is a Moroccan- French artist 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.

In 2006, Barrada 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).

Programming at MASS MoCA is made possible in part by the Barr Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Mass Cultural Council, and the Joe Thompson “Yes” Fund.

Yto Barrada
Tree Identification for Beginners (film still), 2017
16mm film, color, sound
36 min.
Courtesy of the artist, Pace Gallery; Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/ Hamburg; Galerie Polaris, Paris