Between Political Engagement and Introspection: Yto Barrada and Her Insightful Poetic Interpretation of Her Context of Origin

Abstract

In this article, we examine how life experiences shape the US-based French-Moroccan artist's connection to her environment through the aesthetic dimension, generating an investigation in which the personal and the political are intertwined. In doing so, we highlight the narrative strategies that emerge from Barrada's engagement with her hometown, Tangier, and with Morocco as a whole. These strategies, as we will attempt to demonstrate in this text, focus on the inequalities of border spaces, the symbolic connotations of the Strait of Gibraltar, post-colonial challenges, the questioning of cultural identity as proposed by power and the lingering legacies of colonialism, described by the artist as “the false guides”. In short, it is a theoretical approach to a type of artistic practice that emerges from a decolonial consciousness and a deep knowledge of the context described, formulated with wit, humor, and irony.