Introduction

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. This area divides the island between North and South, and forms the starting point of Rosa Barba’s artistic intervention.

The project started seven years ago when Barba was invited by Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia and by the curator Mirjam Varadinis to Cyprus and proposed a cinema sculpture for the Buffer Zone. The inaugural ceremony of the Open-Air Cinema will take place in the presence of His Excellency the Ambassador of Italy to Cyprus on September 10, 2021, with the projection of Barba's film Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage along with films selected by the project’s Advisory Board of artists from each side of the Green Line and beyond. Visitors from both sides of the island will be able to enter the Buffer Zone, which is usually closed to civilians.

In a recent article for The Brooklyn Rail, Rosa Barba discusses this project as well as her other current projects – Read it here