Rosa Barba

Rosa Barba was born in 1972 in Agrigento, Italy, and lives and works in Berlin.

Rosa Barba’s multidisciplinary practice combines film, sculpture, sound, performance, and text in immersive, site-responsive installations. Exploring the materiality of film and the relationship between image, space, and landscape, her work draws on the languages of experimental documentary and fiction. Through historical references and personal memory, she examines the ways human intervention shapes the environment while opening poetic and conceptual readings of place.

Barba was the recipient of the 2019 Calder Prize. During her residency at Atelier Calder, she developed an experimental sound installation composed of interconnected piano strings and film projectors that generated a continuous live sound loop throughout the studio. She also created a series of works exploring the plasticity and transparency of 16mm and 35mm film by weaving strips of developed blue and red film onto frames. Inspired by the basket-weaving traditions of the Saché region, these works invited viewers to perceive the studio and surrounding landscape through layers of colored film.