Macro and Deutsche Bank’s partnership, established in 2012 with the purpose of exhibiting internationally known artists in Rome, brings for the first time in Italy the exhibition RIFFS, by Moroccan artist Yto Barrada.

Barrada is Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2011 - the award yearly given to young artists distinguished for their work’s significance and creativity that is part of the cultural and artistic activities the Institute promotes internationally.

“It is important to create situations where people meet with different cultures and social realities” says Friedhelm Hütte, Deutsche Bank’s Global Head of Art for Deutsche Bank, “In this sense, to name Yto Barrada as Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2011 is exemplary.” Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of Macro, adds: “Barrada is an artist extremely attentive to the human dramas of our time. Visitors to the exhibition can take a personal journey inside a little-known history feeling as if it was never read before”.

The exhibition – curated by Friedhelm Hütte and independent curator Marie Muracciole – travelled from the Guggenheim in Berlin to Wiels in Brussels, the Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and will be at Macro from September 20th to November 11th, 2012 with an installation conceived for the museum’s spaces. The exhibition will continue its tour to the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Zurich.

The title of the show, Riffs, has multiple references: Riffs recalls the Rif mountains, in Northern Morocco, where in 1921 a historic revolt took place. It also refers to the Cinema Rif, home of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, of which the artist is the founding director. Above all, the title of the show refers to the musical term “riff”, a phrase of music frequently repeated in a composition, a concept that inspires the artist’s presentation of her works and the show’s layout.

The frame of Yto Barrada’s work is her city, Tangier, strongly transformed after the Schengen Agreement in 1991, which the artists analyzes in terms of both past and current consequences.

“The artist investigates history’s forgotten versions, the world behind the scenes, shadows in the evolution of her country. Ordinary people, neighborhoods and places of everyday life and “touristic” stereotypes play a fundamental role in front of the camera of the artist. Yto Barrada’s strategy combines a documentaristic approach with an almost meditative use of images, to tell what North Africa is, with its currently changing economic, cultural and political boundaries”, says Marie Muracciole.

The show at Macro, which opens in conjunction with Fotografia - Festival Internazionale di Roma, includes photographs, printed material, sculptures and videos; a program of film screenings from the Cinémathèque de Tanger will be shown at the Macro’s conference room. The Cinémathèque, founded in 2003 as a non-profit association, is an important cultural reality, the first of its kind in North Africa. Its mission is to develop film culture in Morocco through the promotion of foreign as well as local cinema, the production of documentaries, narrative films, artists’ videos and experimental films, with particular attention given to educational activities and to the promotion of a dialogue among professionals.

Yto Barrada will also participate in the Fotografia with several pieces shown in “Work” the section curated by Marco Delogu which gathers works by photographers such as Roger Ballen, Claire Chevrier, Raphaël Dallaporta, Joseph Koudelka, Chris Killip, Fosco Maraini, Edgar Martins, Nina Poppe, Simon Roberts, Lars Tunbjörk and Florian van Roekel.

Yto Barrada was born in Paris in 1971 and grew up in Tangier, Morocco. She studied history and political science at the Sorbonne in Paris, and photography in New York. Among her exhibitions: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), SFMoMA (San Francisco), Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), and the 2007 and 2011 editions of the Venice Biennale. In 2011 she was named ‘Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year’, with a solo-show at the Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin). Her monograph will be published by JRP Ringier next year. Yto Barrada is the founding director of the Cinémathèque de Tanger.

Macro - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma
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Tickets
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Full price: non residents 12,00 €, residents 11,00 €.
Reduced price: non residents 10,00 €, residents 9,00 €.