Following the trope of holes and blanks, Yto Barrada focuses not so much on her
subjects themselves as on the traces they leave. Her exhibitions often include ‘readymade’
found objects or daily things overlooked by others, which become iconic in the
complex stories she spins.
Some months ago, the artist embarked on an extensive study of natural colorants and
traditional dyeing techniques. Starting out with the idea of transposing the color code
from the lithological table into different media such as photography and textiles,
Barrada began by systematically testing dyes on materials including cotton, silk, and
wool. She then arrayed the resulting hundreds of fabric swatches in accordance with a
classification of their own and archived them in sample books; a system which she also
applied to this artist´s book.
Sample books—in which small specimens of a product bear tangible and visible witness
to themselves—are relics of a consumer society of the past: they have disappeared
almost entirely from commerce today. Perhaps their last redoubt is the household
textiles business. As Barrada sees them, old sample books not only hold a distinctive
aesthetic appeal, they also speak to the histories of manufacturing and distribution, of
economic structures and the hierarchies between producers, wholesalers, and retailers.

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