Repost from @followriversinstitute • As an organization committed to art informed by diaspora, we partner with and travel to organizations far and wide. Our patterns of movement have become not only a study of migration (of art, ideas, and bodies) but also of home. Home is not a fixed position; it is busy changing all the while it is left behind. Suspended in the corner of ‘Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind,’ on view at MASS MoCA, is Barrada’s textile work—‘Untitled (Ibn Battuta I),’ 2019. It is named after the 14th century Berber Maghrebi scholar and explorer, who traveled widely across North Africa, Eurasia, and the lands of Dar al-Islam—more than any other explorer in pre-modern history. At the end of his life, he recounted his journeys in ‘The Rihla’ (‘A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonder of Cities and Marvels of Traveling’). It is a work about going and coming (back to Morocco, changed by plague and family life cycles). And it is about the world we experience, as much as the one we see through the eyes of others (‘The Rihla’ likely includes appropriations of other travelers’ accounts, by which Ibn Battuta realized a more comprehensive account of ‘his’ world.) After two weeks on the Pacific Ocean, the Rivers team is back home in New Orleans, a changed place drawing on the spirit of carnival to overcome the loss of the past two years. And Yto Barrada is flying back again from Tangier. And soon we will share stories so that we can imagine all the places the other has been. ‘Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind’ will be on view at MASS MoCA until May 29, 2023. Images: Barrada, Detail of ‘Untitled (Ibn Battuta I), 2019, cotton and dyes from plant extracts, 81 x 35 in + full image, Photos: Arthur Evans for MASS MoCA @ytobarrada @massmoca @followriversinstitute @pacegallery @warholfoundation #ytobarrada #waystobafflethewind #massmoca #followriversinstitute #warholgrantee