Yto Barrada

Through film, photography, sculpture, and installation, artist Yto Barrada investigates the relationship between images and objects in their cultural and historical presentations. Constantly mining and uncovering material from a diverse range of subjects and sites—personal narratives, myths, educational graphics, textile history, geology, and paleontology—Barrada’s work unearths and explores the hidden and overlooked traces of the periphery.

Barrada’s exhibition title, Klaatu Barrada Nikto, is inspired by a key line in the 1951 science-fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Functioning as a shibboleth, magical incantation, and a code for action, the untranslatable phrase was adapted by Barrada as an entry point for her AAM exhibition—a constellation of works that directly addresses the shifting notions of authenticity and tradition. Employing key aspects of museum exhibition practices, from the readymade to the vitrine, Barrada questions the construction of narrative and how histories are communicated, taught, and embodied within the context of their display.

For more information, visit the Aspen Art Museum's (opens in a new window) website.