Rosa Barba, the acclaimed Italian artist, continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art with her solo exhibition at Cahiers d’Art Gallery in Paris. Titled Inserted Between The Painted Glass, the exhibition offered an intimate dive into her creative universe, where film and sculpture meet in unexpected ways.
Rosa Barba: Figure of Contemporary Art
Rosa Barba is a figure in contemporary art — an artist whose work transcends the boundaries between cinema, sculpture, and installation. Born in Agrigento, Sicily, and now based in Berlin, she explores notions of time, memory, and perception through innovative use of film as a medium. Her works are as much material explorations as they are poetic meditations on the passage of time and the fragility of human experience.
Held until May 25, the Inserted Between The Painted Glass exhibition at Cahiers d’Art in Paris was a celebration of the materiality of film. Rosa Barba presented two distinct bodies of work. One of the centerpiece pieces, a complex weaving of films inspired by the traditional basketry technique from the Saché region, speaks volumes about Rosa Barba’s technique… This film weaving forms a textured and immersive work, playing with the codes of the cinematic medium. “I am interested in deconstructing the hierarchy of cinema – whether the image is in front or behind the lens, or even if nothing is projected,” she told Icon-Icon in an interview.
“I am interested in deconstructing the hierarchy of cinema—whether the image is in front or behind the lens, or even if nothing is projected. I want people to be mentally activated and become strong thinkers, creating a kind of knowledge through these possibilities,” she shared with Icon-Icon during an interview.
For the first time as well, Rosa Barba unveiled a work from her Double Rhymes series. This recent creation consists of a steel box framing celluloid strips of different colors, in constant motion. The process of releasing and tensioning the film strips generates abstract patterns and a dynamic play of lines — patterns that the artist describes as “cinematic paintings.” This work highlights Rosa Barba’s ongoing exploration of the fundamental elements of cinema – text, images, light, and sound – reinterpreting them, as usual, in new contexts.
Another fascinating aspect of the exhibition at Cahiers d’Art Gallery was the series of works created in collaboration with the eponymous review. Rosa Barba explored the publisher’s archives, offering a contemporary interpretation of this avant-garde publication that has marked the history of art. Using the original copper printing plates, notably those depicting Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso, Rosa Barba generated prints and monoprints that incorporate her distinctive cinematic language.
Barba’s Cinematic Work
Indeed, at the heart of Rosa Barba’s artistic practice is film, which she uses not only as a means to tell stories but also as a sculptural material.
Her cinematic works are situated between experimental documentary and fictional narration, indeterminately placed in time. They often focus on natural landscapes and human interventions in the environment, probing the relationship between historical archives, personal anecdotes, and cinematic representation, creating spaces of memory and uncertainty, more readable as reassuring myths than the unstable reality they represent. “What I hope with my work is to activate the possibility for people to change their perspective, to reflect on the world and our potential for change. I firmly believe that art can open these doors, and cinema can show us these possibilities very powerfully,” she explained to Icon-Icon.
Through her exhibitions, notably at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, or Tate Modern, her work has always been marked by a deep interrogation of temporality, memory, and materiality. Her works resonate globally — as evidenced by her numerous participations in biennials, including the Venice Biennale and the Berlin Biennale. Her unique approach to cinematic art has earned her many accolades, including the prestigious Nam June Paik Award and Calder Prize.
Rosa Barba ultimately fits into a movement that blurs the boundaries between artistic disciplines. Her work recalls avant-garde cinema experiments… By playing with the fundamental elements of film, she creates works that are both visual, auditory, and tactile, offering a complete sensory experience.
Rosa Barba ultimately belongs to a movement that blurs the boundaries between artistic disciplines. Her work recalls the experiments of avant-garde cinema. By playing with the fundamental elements of film, she creates works that are visual, auditory, and tactile, offering a complete sensory experience.
“In one of my recent projects, I spent over a year in the archives of the women astronomers at Harvard, who were simply called computers. They did the mathematical work of understanding the universe and made revolutionary discoveries. I am fascinated by how they were both invisible and powerful, much like the female characters in Fellini or Visconti’s films, who bring a mysterious and desired force. Astronomy and cinema, in my view, examine light and color to get closer to what produces these spaces: light passing through the properties of material. The type of shimmer that results from this light can only be produced by a specific approach, that is, when light passes through the material of a film or the properties of pulsating stars,” she explained further during the interview with Icon-Icon.
Enough to admirably dive into the work of a renowned artist!