Yto Barrada Will Represent France at 2026 Venice Biennale

Yto Barrada b. 1971, France Follow +

French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, whose practice centres geopolitical concerns like climate change and migration, will represent France at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, the Institut francais announced this week.

The selection committee called Barrada an ‘iconoclastic researcher’ and ‘a borderless and holistic artist’, adding that she has reinvented ‘social sculpture’ through alternative pedagogies.

‘From Paris to Tangier, and through New York, [Barrada] traces a unique cartography that gathers new voices—unseen, fragile, historical, or forgotten—to share their narratives,’ the committee said.

Born in 1971 in Paris, Barrada studied history and political science at the Sorbonne, followed by photography in New York. Over the past 25 years, she has worked in photography, installation, textiles, and film, notably co-founding the independent cinema Cinémathèque de Tanger in 2006.

Barrada’s conservation projects include The Mothership in Tangier, an eco-campus built on land adjacent to her childhood home, where artists can learn about growing and making natural dyes.

Earlier this year, Barrada, alongside other artists, pulled her work from a survey of textiles at the Barbican in London, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, after the institution cancelled a talk by writer Pankaj Mishra from concern he would address the war in Gaza.

Barrada’s work was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennales. Her current installation at MoMA PS1 in New York, Le Grand Soir, opened this April with towering sculptures made from bright stacked blocks spread around the museum’s courtyard.

Her work will replace Julien Creuzet‘s installation at the current French Pavilion in Venice, closing on 24 November. —[O]

Main image: Yto Barrada. © Yto Barrada. Photo: Benoît Peverelli.