Switzerland has announced that Latifa Echakhch will represent the country at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale. Curator Francesco Stocchi and percussionist Alexandre Babel will collaborate with the artist to help her realize her vision for the pavilion, which will involve creating a rhythm-based experience with visual, acoustic, and spatial effects. She was selected from a shortlist of six artists by a jury comprising artist Laurence Bonvin, critic and curator Riccardo Lisi, art historian Federica Martini, Contemporary & editor Yvette Mutumba, and Stedelijk Museum director Rein Wolfs.

Born in Morocco in 1974, Echakhch has lived and worked in Fully, Switzerland, since 2012. She studied art at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in Cergy-Pontoise and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and has had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; the Swiss Institute, New York; and Tate Modern, London. She has also participated in the Fifteenth Istanbul Biennial; the Fifty-Fourth Venice Biennale; the Eleventh Sharjah Biennial; and Manifesta 7 in Bolzano, Italy.

Known for her installations, which often deconstruct cultural symbols and challenge preconceived notions about identity, history, and religion, Echakhch is represented by kamel mennour, Paris and London; kaufmann repetto, Milan and New York; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv; and Metro Pictures, New York. In 2013, she became the fourth woman to be awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize, France’s highest honor in the arts, and in 2015, she received the Zurich Art Prize. In a 2012 review of an exhibition of her works at kaufmann repetto, Alessandra Pioselli wrote: “All Echakhch’s works somehow or other critique the present and reflect on the everyday nature of being in the world.”