Yto Barrada represents France in Venice with "Comme Saturne", a textile installation oscillating between beauty and violence.

From May 9 to November 22, 2026, the 61st Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art opens its doors under the theme "In Minor Keys," curated posthumously by the Swiss-Cameroonian Koyo Kouoh, the first African woman to hold this position in the Biennale's history. To represent France, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the French Institute have selected the Franco-Moroccan visual artist Yto Barrada. Born in Paris in 1971 and living between Tangier and New York, she is known for her multidisciplinary work drawing on archives and oral tradition. She is also a co-founder of the Cinémathèque de Tanger. Her installation, entitled Comme Saturne (Like Saturn), is accompanied by curator Myriam Ben Salah, director of the Renaissance Society in Chicago.

Textiles as the original material, Saturn as the tutelary figure

At the heart of the project lies a unique technique: "devouring," a process that involves etching velvet with acid to reveal new patterns. This technique echoes Vergniaud's famous statement before his execution in 1793: "Like Saturn, the revolution devours its children." It is this ambiguity between beauty and violence that captivated Yto Barrada. Textiles—fabrics, dyes, wool—are central to everything. "They are at the heart of everything, fragile and everyday," explains the artist. The French Pavilion's layout unfolds across several distinct spaces: goatskin kites open the exhibition; the Room of Folds features large wool curtains bleached by light and partially animated by a mechanism; the Workroom plunges visitors into the darkness of the ancient Saturnalia; the Room of Lights explores the duel between natural dyes and industrial synthetic colors; Finally, the Room of the Devoured embodies Saturnian violence, matter eaten away by acid offering an interpretation of alteration as a strategy that is both aesthetic and political.

A pavilion conceived as "a tool for poetic survival"

For Yto Barrada, the French Pavilion must function as “a tool for poetic survival,” punctuated by alternations and repetitions. Echoing the thought of Koyo Kouoh—who encouraged turning toward the invisible, the slow, and the ancestral—the installation proposes slowing down to decipher these “minor frequencies” through cross-border and intergenerational narratives. The work spans several disciplines: textiles, sculpture, film, and publishing. The artist works through subtle shifts: one word evokes another, a technique opens onto a myth, a color refers to a material history, and an error becomes a creative gesture. The installation was previewed to the public at the Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris on March 25.