Monuments & Flowers brings together a selection of seminal video work culled from the archives of ArteEast with the work of contemporary voices.
Curated by Regine Basha
Monuments & Flowers draws from the particularly accelerated ebb and flow of destruction and construction, death and regeneration — of cities, of ideologies, of nationalities, of quotidian life and ecosystems — that the region termed the ‘Middle East’ is continually undergoing. The artists selected here internalize this state of constant flux, employing both fictional and diaristic narratives while collapsing the hyper-real with the surreal. Scenes from daily life become infused with a subconscious overlay of desire, fear, alienation or utopian longings. Through highly evocative mixed use of time-based media; ranging from found super 8mm, to stained celluloid, to CGI, many of the works lean towards a retro-futurist lens that is highly attentive to the minutiae and habits of locale, yet slippery in its chronology.
Hand-Me-Downs, 2011
Yto Barrada (Morocco)
Keyword Searches for Dust, 2009
Malak Helmy (Egypt)
Don’t Touch Me Tomatoes & Chachacha, 2013
Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon)
What Things May Come, 2019
Marianne Fahmy (Egypt)
Most Fabulous Place, 2008
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Domestic Tourism II, 2009
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Monuments & Flowers was curated as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 15 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Yto Barrada digs into her family history and narrates sixteen "myths" from unreliable narrators and unverifiable stories, illustrated with strangers' home movies and archival films from the last half-century in Morocco.
About the Filmmaker
Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) is a Moroccan-French artist recognized for her multidisciplinary investigations of cultural phenomena and historical narratives. Engaging with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions, Barradaʼs installations reinterpret social relationships, uncover subaltern histories, and reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalized narratives. In 2006, Barrada founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, the first art house theatre to celebrate local and international cinema in Tangier.
Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, the Barbican, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Society, Witte de With, the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennales.
- Year2011
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryMorocco
- DirectorYto Barrada
- FilmmakerYto Barrada
- EditorDominique Auvray
Monuments & Flowers brings together a selection of seminal video work culled from the archives of ArteEast with the work of contemporary voices.
Curated by Regine Basha
Monuments & Flowers draws from the particularly accelerated ebb and flow of destruction and construction, death and regeneration — of cities, of ideologies, of nationalities, of quotidian life and ecosystems — that the region termed the ‘Middle East’ is continually undergoing. The artists selected here internalize this state of constant flux, employing both fictional and diaristic narratives while collapsing the hyper-real with the surreal. Scenes from daily life become infused with a subconscious overlay of desire, fear, alienation or utopian longings. Through highly evocative mixed use of time-based media; ranging from found super 8mm, to stained celluloid, to CGI, many of the works lean towards a retro-futurist lens that is highly attentive to the minutiae and habits of locale, yet slippery in its chronology.
Hand-Me-Downs, 2011
Yto Barrada (Morocco)
Keyword Searches for Dust, 2009
Malak Helmy (Egypt)
Don’t Touch Me Tomatoes & Chachacha, 2013
Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon)
What Things May Come, 2019
Marianne Fahmy (Egypt)
Most Fabulous Place, 2008
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Domestic Tourism II, 2009
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Monuments & Flowers was curated as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 15 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
Yto Barrada digs into her family history and narrates sixteen "myths" from unreliable narrators and unverifiable stories, illustrated with strangers' home movies and archival films from the last half-century in Morocco.
About the Filmmaker
Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) is a Moroccan-French artist recognized for her multidisciplinary investigations of cultural phenomena and historical narratives. Engaging with the performativity of archival practices and public interventions, Barradaʼs installations reinterpret social relationships, uncover subaltern histories, and reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalized narratives. In 2006, Barrada founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger, the first art house theatre to celebrate local and international cinema in Tangier.
Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, the Barbican, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Society, Witte de With, the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennales.
- Year2011
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryMorocco
- DirectorYto Barrada
- FilmmakerYto Barrada
- EditorDominique Auvray