Yto Barrada started out as a political scientist, studying the roadblocks between Israel and the West Bank. But she found herself “taking more photographs than notes,” she recalls in a 2006 interview. “There were lots of things with humour, poetry—what do you do with that in a dissertation? You’re supposed to get rid of it!” So she switched to art and went home to Morocco, which has border tensions of its own centered around the migrants who often drown trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain. Barrada’s recent films and photography chronicle the uneasy politics of everyday life in and around the Moroccan coastal city of Tangier, where she lives part-time.
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Reception Sun 3/18, 4-7 PM. Through 4/22: Tue-Fri 10 AM-5 PM, Sat-Sun noon-5 PM, Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis, Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418, 773-702-8670, renaissancesociety.org, free.
