174 Two metal palm trees on wooden wagons are displayed in the Louis Vuitton store in Casablanca’s Morocco Mall. Myrna Ayad meets Yto Barrada and her Twin Palm Island installation, commissioned by the luxury brand. showCase T heir location along the Mediter- ranean bestows upon Levantine and North african countries fertile lands with a plethora of lush vegetation. each country is renowned for its botanical riches, most of which have biblical references and with some tracing back to prehistoric egypt – Lebanon’s cedars; the olive trees of syria and Palestine; and across the sahara, the palm tree. In Morocco alone, there are some five hundred varieties of palm trees, some of which can live up to 150 years. The tree’s pro- visions are many, and extend beyond economic export or income for locals – for one, their roots prevent soil erosion in a climate as harsh as Mo- rocco’s. and aesthetically, a drive through or walk along the wide boulevards lined with robust palm trees in any Moroccan city, is breathtaking. The trees stand tall, proud, and embody a spirit of re- silience; they also encapsulate an ingredient of age-old Moroccan identity. For Tangier-based Yto Barrada, these boulevards are emblematic of Po- temkin villages – a phrase which takes its name from a myth involving Russian minister Grigory Potemkin, who had faux villages set up to impress Catherine II, of Russia’s conquests during the mon- arch’s inspection following the Crimean war. and in Morocco, state visits include a drive around the cities, where, like armed guards, the date palms shield the destitution behind their very trunks. The trees hide what lies behind – what the blaze of in- dustry has reaped and what damage urbanisation has brought about. In a clever play on aesthetics and symbolism, Barrada created Twin Palm Island, an installation commissioned by Louis Vuitton for the luxury brand’s store in Casablanca’s Morocco Mall. It marks the house’s first art collaboration in Morocco, fol- lowing projects with Farhad Moshiri, Nadim Karam and shadia and Raja alem in Dubai. It should be noted that the relationship with art and luxury has been an inherent component of the Louis Vuitton philosophy since the brand’s inception in 1854. James Turrell, olafur eliasson and Takashi Mu- rakami are just some of the art world’s celebrated figures who have collaborated with the house; not to mention the establishment of the Fonda- tion Louis Vuitton pour la Création, which stages exhibitions of 20th- and 21st-century art. It was a commission that Barrada was all too happy to take on. she credits the house’s professional team, who had been following her works and news – her 2011 Deutsche Bank artist of the Year award and subsequent exhibition at the Berlin Guggen- heim, as well as her works in major public and private collections worldwide. That this new work – a continuation of a multimedia trajectory that addresses themes of hope, identity, landscape, tradition and progress – is located in a commercial “contradictive” space, is an intellectual, yet playful nod to one of Barrada’s passions: the collision between botany and urban development. her oeuvre has seen her create ‘serious toys’ – artworks which take on a physical playful demeanour but which address critical issues. Two metal date palms, dotted with colourful incandescent light-bulbs, sit on two red wooden wagons in the Louis Vuitton store window. Barrada acknowledges that Twin Palm Island is window display art, a tradition that she approves of. They are two to suggest a sequence, echoing Morocco’s boulevards lined with palm trees; they are differ- ently sized to emulate the way in which they are realistically planted and ‘criminally’ trimmed; they feature rare, luminous light-bulbs, of which some don’t glow, to suggest the hazards of urbanisation vis-à-vis the Moroccan landscape; and they sit on wagons to insinuate mobility – where are the trees going and why are they being moved in the first place? and yet, for all its powerful metaphors, Twin Palm Island is a happy installation but also one that calls to question: just who reigns over the Moroccan date palms and what benefits do the decision-makers attain? Facing page: Yto Barrada. (Detail) Twin Palm Island . 2012. Two trees: metal and bulbs; Two wagons: wood, paint and rubber wheels. Tree heights, 180 cm and 250 cm, respectively. Width of trees: approximately 140 cm; Height of wagons: approximately 25 cm. Width of wagons: approximately 130 cm. Image courtesy Louis Vuitton. TRUE TO THE 175 showCase TREE