Rosa Barba

Although Rosa Barba works in a number of mediums—including installation, sculpture, text, sound recordings, and projections—she almost exclusively addresses the subject of cinema. Using both the familiar narrative structures of film and the genre’s physical materials, such as celluloid rolls and deconstructed projectors, the Berlin-based artist mines the history and conventions of the silver screen, creating works that explore issues of history, geography, and the imagination. Her pieces are playful and at times sci-fi-esque; the sculptural work Boundaries of Consumption (2012) features retrofitted film cans and a 16mm projector combined to create a mutating area of light. For the film Outwardly from Earth’s Center (2010), Barba collaborated with the inhabitants of a small Swedish island to create a surreal riff on the documentary genre.