International Center of Photography (ICP) Announces Summer Exhibition Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist
Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist
On View
May 22–September 2, 2024
Location
79 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002
NEW YORK, NY (March 26, 2024)—This summer, ICP will present a solo exhibition of work by internationally acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist, Yto Barrada. This 10-year survey of Barrada’s photographic and film practice comprises over 40 works, nearly all of them unique, including new work exploring the space of the darkroom. Part-Time Abstractionist offers insight into the ways Barrada utilizes abstraction to examine the social, political, and industrial structures that have and continue to shape society.
A specific focus on play, childhood, and learning will course throughout the show, including works from found-object photogram series—Bonbon (2016-17), colorful, abstract works made with candy wrappers, Blockhead! Toy (2017), printed with a child’s set of blocks, and Practice Piece (2017), contact prints of found sewing lessons. In acknowledgement of ICP’s school and active darkroom classes, many of these series use alternative darkroom processes, including the more recent Dodge and Burn Tools (2021), which will also be on view.
Curator Elisabeth Sherman has remarked, “Barrada has kept a deep commitment to photography and image making throughout her career, while always questioning the boundaries of these categories and their relationship to painting, sculpture, craft and the unexplored origins of a modernist vocabulary. These investigations, coupled with her uncovering of hidden histories and their shaping of our present, make Barrada one of the most important artists of her generation.”
Yto Barrada: Part Time-Abstractionist is the first exhibition in a new series focusing on alumni of ICP’s school. Barrada graduated from ICP’s Full-Time Documentary program in 1996.
The exhibition is curated by Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at ICP.
About the Artist
Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) is a visual artist and educator engaged with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions. In 2006, Barrada founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first cinema cultural center, now an internationally appreciated institution. In 2023, she created The Mothership, an eco-feminist research center and residency in Tangier, centered around a dye garden.
Her work is held in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum,Tate Modern, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Barrada has received multiple awards, including the Mario Merz Prize (2022); the Queen Sonja Print Award (2022); the Roy R. Neuberger Prize (2019); the Abraaj Group Art Prize, UAE (2015); Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography (2013); Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year (2011). She is a 2023 Soros Art Fellow.
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Exhibition Support
Exhibition support for Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist is generously provided by the ICP Exhibitions Committee.
Exhibitions at ICP are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture. Cornell Capa founded ICP in 1974 to champion “concerned photography”—socially and politically minded images that can educate and change the world. Through exhibitions, education programs, community outreach, and public programs, ICP offers an open forum for dialogue about the power of the image. Since its inception, ICP has presented more than 700 exhibitions, provided thousands of classes, and hosted a wide variety of public programs. ICP launched its new integrated center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in January 2020. Located at 79 Essex Street, ICP is the cultural anchor of Essex Crossing, one of the most highly anticipated and expansive mixed-use developments in New York City. ICP pays respect to the original stewards of this land, the Lenape people, and other Indigenous communities.
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