Reposting from @followriversinstitute after receiving the news that Yto is the 2022 recipient of the Queen Sonja Print Award. Just to say- there was a stack of gorgeous prints, mere feet from the wind machine, prepared to be blown away. I am, as ever, blown away in Yto’s midst.:) 💜 • Three months before the opening of ‘Yto Barrada: How to Baffle the Wind,’ Hurricane Ida made landfall in Southeastern Louisiana as a Category 4 Hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Its effects were devastating for coastal communities. Surely we experienced something of the uncanny-in having spent preceding months imagining wind and its artificial generation by large, industrial machines (the kind used on film sets to give the effect of significant weather events) for an exhibition. A wind machine would have been handy in the still heat that followed the storm, had there been any electricity by which to power it. We layered the real and the unreal, equal in their absurdity. We helped in the design of systems by which to control the wind, and the machines (which could not be powered) to make the wind that would need controlling. We purchased ready-made void-fill machines to fill galleries and dream lives—and built others from found materials. Everyone was using what they had. A friend slept two nights in sweltering heat, cooled by nestling the bags of once-frozen baking flour. It is remarkable when lived experience cannot be distinguished from art. And also often heartbreaking. As summer and the threat of hurricanes return, we go back to our untrustworthy memories and predictive models (backward and forward). For the biggies, we turn to our friend - @thetindermeteorologist – on whom we depend as much as we can on anyone we’ve only ever met through the internet (IYKYK). But for the daily threats, Yto Barrada provides a sensitive system – made of paper and string and cotton balls, best used on less demonstrative drafts – as when a person gently walks through a room. Or laughs. Or breaths. Or just quietly imagines...the wind. @ytobarrada @followriversinstitute @massmoca @thetindermeteorologist #ytobarrada #waystobafflethewind #followriversinstitute