This new work by Yto Barrada is inspired by the song “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, popularized in 1968 by Tiny Tim, also known as Herbert Butros Khaury, a singer of Lebanese descent. Singing of two lovers intruding into an abandoned field of tulips, the work is about trespassing into a space of liberty and encounters. Barrada evokes this vague terrain of tulips, once the symbol of the Ottoman Empire which colonized Lebanon and the region for over 600 years, and today a symbol of the intensive agriculture of tulips in the Netherlands. In Barrada’s work, the flowers are not only contained—they become the containers themselves, a subtle metalepsis of form, playfully constructed like building blocks, that turns the ephemeral petals into functional pieces.

Marwan Rechmaoui’s forest responds to an essay by John Berger, in which the author recounts a conversation with his own mother. The two were talking about the disturbance caused by a dog that was furiously barking; its chain was too short to allow it to reach the shade. Berger’s mother suggested that simply lengthening the chain a little would allow the distressed animal to find shade, calm down, and that consequently many good things might flow from this small act.