Yto Barrada

Audioguide

Belvedere is Italian for "beautiful view". In architecture, it's the term for balconies or buildings that offer a magnificent, wide-ranging view. In this instance, the horizon has dissolved into mist. An elderly man stands in front of a wall covered in graffiti looking out over the water from Africa towards Europe. He's standing in the port of Tangier, the Moroccan city on the Strait of Gibraltar, the point at which the distance between Africa and Europe is a mere 13 kilometres or 8 miles. Since the Schengen Agreement was signed in 1985, Moroccans no longer have the right to travel to Europe freely. While millions of tourists visit Morocco from Europe, the neighbouring continent has receded into the distance for Moroccans. Many look across from here to Europe and imagine a better life worth risking their lives for. People who risk the dangerous crossing are sometimes described in Tangier as “having burned," according to Yto Barrada.

…"because you burn your past, your identity, your papers. […] The fact that the border is closed creates this situation of longing, desire to cross, and the violence of that desire is that it's confronted to a wall. What I try to describe in my images is that state, that situation."