Whitney Biennial 2022: 
Quiet as It’s Kept

Floor 5

Born 1971 in Paris, France
Lives in Brooklyn, NY, and Tangier, Morocco

In this film installation, Yto Barrada entwines a specialized visual vocabulary of age and decay with an exploration of motherhood, inheritance, and subjectivity. These forms, which often seem to accidentally refer to the history of modern art, actually describe fatigue and rot by processes that are imperceptible in real time. The footage was produced at two “weather acceleration” facilities across the U.S., in Miami and Phoenix. The purpose of these industrial labs is to simulate the effects of the sun in a condensed time frame in order to test the durability of consumer products and materials such as plastics, automotive and domestic parts, paints, and textiles against fading and corrosion. Workers share surreal fields and offices with machines, and it is the human eye that must be constantly calibrated as a tool of measurement. Barrada’s multidisciplinary work draws upon metaphor to emphasize the symbolic, political, and culturally specific context of abstract ideas and forms. She often presents standardized processes alongside their intensely personal ramifications. Here, color is configured as a measurement of time and the implacable degradations of exposure, evoking rites of passage between the marvelous and the monstrous.

Barrada’s multidisciplinary work draws upon metaphor to emphasize the symbolic, political, and culturally specific context of abstract ideas and forms. She often presents standardized processes alongside their intensely personal ramifications. Here, color is configured as a measurement of time and the implacable degradations of exposure, evoking rites of passage between the marvelous and the monstrous.