Rosa Barba

Born in Italy. Lives and works in Berlin.

Exhibition view: Rosa Barba: In a Perpetual Now, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2021. Photo © Andrea Rossetti.

Introduction

Rosa Barba engages within the medium of film through a sculptural approach. In her works, Barba creates installations and site-specific interventions to analyze the ways film articulates space, placing the work and the viewer in a new relationship.

Full biography

Selected works

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Gallery Exhibitions

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External Exhibitions

Rosa Barba: The Ocean of One’s Pause

For Rosa Barba, cinema “allows time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap, and extend.” Barba’s conceptual explorations of film probe historical records, personal narratives, and the sensory experience of celluloid, often by...

May 3—July 6, 2025

MoMA: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

AFTER IMAGES

With Rosa Barba and Anicka Yi

AFTER IMAGES With Rosa Barba and Anicka Yi Opening September 11, 2024 September 12, 2024 – July 20, 2025 Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin

September 12, 2024—July 20, 2025

Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin

The Long Road – Collection Display

Rosa Barba

Find out more at www.centrepompidou.fr

October 18, 2023—April 30, 2024

Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Color Out of Space

Rosa Barba

The following question drives Rosa Barba: “How can we develop an alternative archive using an algorithm that both recognizes the research of traditionally underrepresented groups—such as women and scientists from the global south—and ensures that this new machine fills gaps...

September 29, 2023—January 19, 2024

TUDresden

Tale of a City II – Gangneung International Art Festival 2023

With Rosa Barba and Tino Sehgal

Rosa Barba and Tino Sehgal take part in Gangneung International Art Festival 2023, entitled Tale of a City II.

September 26—October 29, 2023

Various locations, Gangneung

What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms

With Rosa Barba

What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms features thought-provoking contemporary works from SFMOMA's collection that offer individual artistic responses to questions about life and art.

From July 22, 2023

SFMOMA – The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

With Rosa Barba, Ceal Floyer, Karin Sander and Julia Scher

This is an exhibition of our time: Superman is thwarted and hits a wall, an oversized hybrid female hare offers motherly protection, a pair of seahorses switch traditional gender roles, and passion creates sparks. With a selection of contemporary works...

May 13—October 8, 2023

Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Emanations

Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba 's first solo presentation in Australia, entitled Emanations, features a selection of works from the last 10 years, among them 16mm and 35mm films, sculpture and installation. Developed in response to the 2023 Perth Festival theme of djinda...

February 24—April 23, 2023

PICA – Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth

The Hidden Conference

Rosa Barba

At the Tate Tanks, Tate Modern Rosa Barba presents The Hidden Conference, 2010-2015 and Wirepiece, 2022. In these two works, Barba interrogates the medium of film and its ability to articulate space and time.

February 20—November 26, 2023

Tate Tanks, Tate Modern, London

Lo Schermo dell'arte

With Rosa Barba and Philippe Parreno

The 2022 festival Lo schermo dell’arte includes a special focus on works by Rosa Barba. Six films will be screened and Barba will also hold a talk with Roberta Tenconi, curator at Milan's Pirelli HangarBicocca. On November 19th, Philippe Parreno's...

November 16—20, 2022

Cinema La Compagnia and other venues, Florence

Weavers

Rosa Barba

Weavers, a new solo presentation by the artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba, unfolds in two spaces of CCC OD — Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré. In the nave, Barba has conceived...

October 6, 2022—April 30, 2023

CCC OD — Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours

Screening | Berlin Art Week 2022

Videoart at Midnight #123

Rosa Barba

Videoart at Midnight welcome Rosa Barba, who in her work repeatedly explores the concept of an anarchic organization of cinematic spaces – a working principle that aims to form a new way...

Friday September 16, 11:59pm

Babylon Cinema, Berlin

Berlin Art Week 2022

Die Tore

With Rosa Barba and Karin Sander

At the invitation of n.b.k. and in collaboration with On Equal Terms and the Berlin Art Week, site-specific works by Rosa Barba, Maria Eichhorn, Herta Müller, and Karin Sander will be on display at the Uferhallen entrance gates, under the...

from Sep 14, 2022

Uferhallen, Berlin

Art Club #36

Rosa Barba

At Villa Medici, Rome, Rosa Barba presents three works spanning over 10 years of her practice that range from film, kinetic sculptures and film sculpture.

September 14—October 27, 2022

Villa Medici, Rome

Color as Program

Co-Curator and exhibition architecture by Liam Gillick

The exhibition Color as Program addresses color as an artistic medium and its programmatic, political dimension on the basis of art and cultural history exhibits from far more than 100 years.

April 8—August 7, 2022

Bundeskunsthalle Bonn

Fata Morgana

With Rosa Barba, Ann Veronica Janssens and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

The Jeu de Paume festival offers the public the opportunity to discover the multiple dimensions of the image in the diversity of its forms. Combining exhibitions, screenings, performances and concerts, and presenting a large number of new productions, this event...

March 22—May 22, 2022

Jeu de Paume, Paris

72nd Berlin International Film Festival

With Rosa Barba and Hito Steyerl

72nd Berlin International Film Festival with Rosa Barba and Hito Steyerl.

February 10—20, 2022

EXTERNAL EXHIBITIONS

Exhibition Notes

Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba's solo presentation Exhibition Notes at Cukrarna is the first to be held in the basement gallery, marking the start of a series of projects exploring the dimensions and possible applications...

February 8—May 1, 2022

Cukrarna, Ljubljana

NOTHINGTOSEENESS – Void/White/Silence

With Rosa Barba, Ceal Floyer, Pierre Huyghe and Karin Sander

John Cage described the equivalent of silence in the visual arts as “nothingtoseeness” and circumscribes nothingness through seeing and feeling. The NOTHINGTOSEENESS - Void/White/Silence exhibition is dedicated to this experience of seeing...

September 15—December 12, 2021

Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, Berlin

Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage

Rosa Barba

Inside the Outset is a project that consists of two parts: a film and a long-term open-air cinema installation within the 180-kilometer UN-controlled 'Green Line Buffer Zone' in Cyprus.

Long-term open-air cinema installation

Buffer Zone, Deryneia, Cyprus

In a Perpetual Now

Rosa Barba

The Neue Nationalgalerie celebrates its reopening after six years of renovation with a solo exhibition by Rosa Barba. Under the title In a Perpetual Now, Barba presents key works of her oeuvre...

August 22, 2021—January 16, 2022

Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility

Rosa Barba with Chad Taylor

Rosa Barba is an artist with a sculptural approach to film and the ways it articulates space, placing the work and the viewer in a new relationship. Her projects encompass film, sculpture,...

September 16—21, 2019

Park Avenue Armory, New York

The Hidden Conference

Rosa Barba

The Hidden Conference is a three-part film series which Rosa Barba shot at different museum storage facilities. This series is a continuation of Barba’s investigation of cultural storage areas and archives which...

September 9, 2019—February 2, 2020

ARTER, Istanbul

Geschichte als Skulptur

Rosa Barba

The work of Berlin-based artist Rosa Barba is characterized by her conceptual approach to film. The focus is on the interest in the relationship between film, space and viewer. Composition, the physicality...

November 10, 2018—February 3, 2019

Kunsthalle Bremen

Send Me Sky

Rosa Barba

Remai Modern is pleased to host Rosa Barba’s first major solo museum project in Canada. The exhibition features a newly-commissioned filmic sculpture, in addition to a selection of her recent work. The...

September 28, 2018—January 13, 2019

Remai Modern, Saskatoon

Rosa Barba

The exhibition at CCA Kitakyushu is Rosa Barba’s first solo presentation in Japan and shows an insight to her artistic work with film and cinematic sculptures. The film Outwardly from Earth’s Center...

June 29—September 9, 2018

CCA, Kitakyushu

Drawn by the Pulse

Rosa Barba

The work of Rosa Barba contests and recasts truth and fiction, myth and reality, metaphor and material to a disorientating degree, which ultimately extends into a conceptual practice. From her earliest proposals...

June 22—October 14, 2018

Tabakalera, International Centre for Contemporary Culture, San Sebastián

From Source to Poem to Rhythm to Reader

Rosa Barba

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents Rosa Barba’s solo exhibition From Source to Poem to Rhythm to Reader curated by Roberta Tenconi: a project that brings together fourteen works made since 2009, including 35mm and...

May 5—October 8, 2017

Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Spacelength Thought

Rosa Barba

The work of the Rosa Barba can be read against the background of an expanded notion of sculpture. In addition to issues of composition, the physicality and plasticity of form, time plays...

April 6—June 25, 2017

Secession, Vienna

Elements of Conduct

Rosa Barba

February 18—May 14, 2017

Malmö Konsthall

From Source to Poem

Rosa Barba

On the occasion of her exhibition at CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Rosa Barba makes a new 35mm film to be screened in the monumental space of the Nave. Shot in...

November 17, 2016—March 26, 2017

CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux

Blind Volumes

Rosa Barba

Blind Volumes is a site-specifc installation for Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, responding to the openly accessible public setting of the museum’s rotunda. Combining film and sculptural episodes, inside the rotunda, an expansive, geometrically...

September 23, 2016—January 8, 2017

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt Rotunde

White Museum – Live

Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba presents the first performance of White Museum– Live in which she plays with the light emitted from a 70mm projector as though it were an instrument. The work is a...

April 10, 2016

MoMA PS1, New York

Spaces for species (and pieces)

Rosa Barba

Spaces for species (and pieces) is Rosa Barba’s first monographic exhibition in a German museum, after numerous exhibitions in museums abroad. Barba was born in 1972 in Agrigento, Italy, but grew up...

November 28, 2015—February 28, 2016

Albertinum, Dresden

The Color Out of Space

Rosa Barba

For this first survey of her work in North America, Barba premieres The Color Out of Space (2015), a new film incorporating images of stars and planets collected over the last year...

October 23, 2015—January 3, 2016

MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge

The Mute Veracity of Matter II

Rosa Barba

The Mute Veracity of Matter II revolves around and is animated by universal phrases and themes belonging to the lives of all of us: city and environment, joy and pain, politics and...

April 9—October 5, 2014

MAXXI, Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Rome

Desert – Performed

Rosa Barba

The work of Rosa Barba makes unconventional and inventive use of cinematic effects, mediums, and modes of presentation. Her installations and objects engage essential filmic components such as celluloid, projection, light, and...

September 7—December 30, 2012

Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis

Time as Perspective

Rosa Barba

From 6 June to 9 September 2012, the Kunsthaus Zürich is presenting the first solo exhibition in Switzerland by the young Italian artist Rosa Barba. At the heart of the presentation is...

June 6—September 9, 2012

Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich

Stage Archive

Rosa Barba

The Rosa Barba. Stage Archive exhibition arises from the collaboration between the two institutions from the Trentino, and revolves around the role of archive, and as such shapes the identity and institutional...

May 28—August 28, 2011

MART d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto

Rosa Barba

In this exhibition, Barba’s carefully choreographed installation divides viewers’ attention between the projected image and projector itself, posing questions as to which is the narrative and which the narrator. The artist’s distinctive...

September 15, 2010—January 8, 2011

TATE Modern, London

Is it a two-dimensional analogy or a metaphor?

Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba’s Is it a two-dimensional analogy or a metaphor? is an exhibit, presented from 28 February to 4 July 2010, entirely constructed around, and inspired by, water and light – the...

February 28—July 4, 2010

Centre international d'art du paysage Île de Vassivière

Pillage of the Sea

Rosa Barba

In Ostend, Rosa Barba presents Pillage of the Sea, 2021, a permanent sculpture. Barba has anchored an outsized cairn on the beach, imitating stones by pouring concrete in textile. The textile makes...

Permanent installation

Ostend, Flanders

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Films

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Radiant Exposures

Rosa Barba

In this film Rosa Barba discusses the ideas behind her exhibition at Esther Schipper and takes us through each of the works presented.

Film: art/beats

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Finissage performance at Rosa Barba’s In a Perpetual Now at Neue Nationalgalerie, 2021-2022

Rosa Barba

In January 2022, a finissage was held for Rosa Barba’s exhibition In a Perpetual Now at Neue Nationalgalerie. On this occasion, drummer Chad Taylor was joined by Rosa Barba on cello to perform Hear, There Where the Echoes Are, 2016, a piece that brings an increasingly sculptural and performative dimension to the exhibition with light beams echoing the drum beat in a choreography that seems to disassemble the cinematic device and dissolve the image. As the title suggests, the image appeared as the instant intersection of the installation, the architecture, and bodies passing through.

Film: MONA Productions

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In A Perpetual Now

Rosa Barba

The Neue Nationalgalerie celebrated its reopening after six years of renovation with a solo exhibition by Rosa Barba. Under the title In a Perpetual Now, Barba presents key works of her oeuvre from the years 2009–2021, as well as a new film created on the occasion of the exhibition: Plastic Limits – For the Projection of Other Architecture.

An expansive steel structure—referring in its architectural design to Mies van der Rohe's early project, Brick Country House—hosts 15 of Barba's cinematic and sculptural works. Specially produced for the architecture of the Neue Nationalgalerie, this major solo exhibition follows the principle of cinematic montage, which plays a pivotal role in the artist’s work as well as her conceptual approach to cinema itself.

Publications

Rosa Barba In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility

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Rosa Barba

Introduction

Selected works

Gallery Exhibitions

They Are Taking All My Letters

External Exhibitions

Rosa Barba: The Ocean of One’s Pause

Featured stories

Rosa Barba on Conducting Sunlight and Unbodied Performance

Rosa Barba’s Cinema of Transformation

The 10 best booths at Paris+ par Art Basel

Rosa Barba – Wie macht sie das?

On Camera - Rosa Barba Interviewed by Maria Walsh

Letter from Berlin

Mesmerizing Machinery: Rosa Barba at Esther Schipper

Rosa Barba, Exhibition Notes

Rosa Barba and Hito Steyerl – 72nd Berlin International Film Festival

Rosa Barba in conversation with Joachim Jäger

Rosa Barba’s Open-Air Cinema and Premiere: Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage, 2021

Rosa Barba. In a Perpetual Now

Spotlight: Rosa Barba

Esther Schipper is pleased to announce the representation of Rosa Barba

Films

Radiant Exposures

Publications

Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba