ReCollect! Yto Barrada at Kunsthaus Zürich: Seeing the Old with New Eyes

Nov 19

Date: 13 December 2024 – 30 November 2025
Venue: Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland

Introduction

At Kunsthaus Zürich, the past is being rearranged. In the exhibition ReCollect! Yto Barrada, the Franco-Moroccan artist brings her films, photographs, textiles and collages into dialogue with artworks from the museum’s collection dating from 1971 — the year she was born. The result is a thoughtful, poetic meditation on colour, memory, time and resistance.

Running from 13 December 2024 to 30 November 2025, the exhibition forms part of the museum’s ongoing ReCollect! series, which invites contemporary artists to reinterpret the collection and propose new narratives from within.

What Is ReCollect!?

ReCollect! is Kunsthaus Zürich’s experimental series that rethinks what a collection can be. Instead of presenting historical artworks in a fixed, chronological order, the museum invites leading contemporary artists to intervene, select works, and create new constellations.

The idea is simple: let artists “see the old with new eyes.”

In this chapter, Yto Barrada mixes her own works with pieces from 1971, activating themes of personal history, societal change, and the rhythm of natural processes.

About Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada (born 1971, Paris) is known for her multidisciplinary practice, which spans film, photography, textiles, printmaking, sculpture and installations. Her work often explores the intersections between personal memory and political history, shifting between intimate stories and global contexts.

Barrada is also the co-founder of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, North Africa’s first art-house cinema and film archive, and the creator of The Mothership, a dye garden and research centre in Tangier that focuses on natural colours and eco-feminist practices.

Her international presence continues to grow: Barrada has exhibited at major museums worldwide and will represent France at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Inside the Exhibition: 1971 as a Lens

For ReCollect!, Barrada selected works from the Kunsthaus collection created in 1971 — a seemingly simple rule that opens rich intellectual territory. Placing her own pieces next to these works creates conversations about time, ageing, social change and the personal histories that shape one’s artistic language.

One of the exhibition’s key threads is the contrast between natural and industrial processes. Slow, plant-based dyeing techniques appear alongside images and objects that evoke accelerated technological time, creating an interplay between care, decay and resistance.

Highlight: “A Day Is Not a Day” (2022)

The centrepiece of the exhibition is Barrada’s 16mm film A Day Is Not a Day.
Filmed in weathering laboratories, the work documents the industrial process of “accelerated ageing,” where materials are exposed to intense light, heat and pressure to simulate years of wear in a short time.

Barrada uses this method as a metaphor for our contemporary condition: societies pushed to move faster, produce more, and compress time beyond what is humanly or ecologically sustainable.

Projected in the museum space, the flickering analogue film becomes a fragile counterpoint to the harsh scientific apparatus it records.

Colour as Material and Meaning

Colour is one of Barrada’s primary languages.

Through her work with natural dyes at The Mothership, she treats colour as a living thing — something that emerges from plants, seasons and cycles of care. These textiles appear throughout the exhibition, creating a tactile dialogue with historical works from 1971.

In this context, colour becomes more than an aesthetic choice. It becomes a method of thinking, a form of resistance to industrial speed, and a way of honouring traditional knowledge systems.

A Space for Reflection, Resistance and Healing

The exhibition invites visitors to slow down and reflect on how we construct meaning across generations. By placing her work next to pieces created during her birth year, Barrada raises subtle questions:

How do we inherit histories?
Which stories survive?
What forms of artistic practice open space for healing or resistance?

Rather than offering linear answers, ReCollect! Yto Barrada creates an environment where viewers can experience time in layered, non-linear ways.

Why This Exhibition Matters for Collectors

For collectors, this exhibition demonstrates how an artist can shape a long-term, multidisciplinary practice that expands across mediums, archives and institutional dialogue.

Barrada’s approach shows:

how artists can create new narratives inside museum collections
how material research (such as natural dye work) can support conceptually rich practices
how film, photography, textiles and found objects can coexist in a coherent artistic language

With Barrada’s growing institutional recognition and her selection for the French Pavilion in Venice, this exhibition is an important moment to understand the depth and direction of her practice.

Plan Your Visit

Exhibition: ReCollect! Yto Barrada
Venue: Kunsthaus Zürich, Heimplatz, Zurich, Switzerland
Dates: 13 December 2024 – 30 November 2025
Opening Hours: See Kunsthaus Zürich website for up-to-date times and special events.

This thoughtful, immersive exhibition is a must-see for anyone interested in contemporary art, material research, and the evolving stories museums tell with their collections.

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