Rosa Barba: “These days, so much is spoon-fed to us; you don’t have to think for yourself anymore”

My first question relates to an encounter the night before: is Rosa Barba really her real name? An elderly visitor had expressed her doubts. It sounded too perfect, too beautiful, too much like a stage name.

Rosa Barba laughs: “Yes, it is. I’m Italian. It’s a perfectly normal name.”

Her parents came from Sicily; she herself grew up in Germany. From an early age, she experienced how people wanted to categorise her: by origin, name, and affiliation. “I developed my mechanisms for causing confusion at an early age,” she confides to me.

Perhaps that fits with her work. Her work, too, defies quick categorisation. For Barba, film is not simply film. A projection is not just an image. A device is not merely technology. Everything can be a tool, a sculpture, a rhythm, a space and an invitation all at once.

At Haus Konstruktiv, visitors are currently encountering works that are not simply meant to be looked at. You walk right through them. Films, texts, projectors, film reels, beams of light, sound and steel structures form a landscape. Rosa Barba speaks of navigation, of islands, of works that constantly interact in different ways across various spaces.

Children, too, according to Barba, would react to this: “Many of them don’t even know what a film image is”, she says. Analogue film has a different physicality: “There is this one image that we don’t see. The flicker creates a special rhythm.” A space can then suddenly be more than just a space. An image more than just an image. Or as Rosa Barba puts it: “You realise the children are in a different experiential space.”

The exhibition also features the 35mm film *Charged*. Micro- and macro-worlds from physics experiments meet open landscapes. The sound is powerful, almost techno-like, but it keeps breaking down. Barba explains that a sound from a lens moving at the speed of the Earth features in it. The visible loop in the space is central to her work. It acts as a transport mechanism, not only for the film, but also for the mind.

“You are automatically placed into a mental transport mechanism”, the artist explains to me. At the same time, it is about leaving gaps open. Not everything is meant to be explained, smoothed over and served up. “We are constantly surrounded by screens. Much is pre-digested; you no longer have to think.»

Rosa Barba’s works aim for the opposite. They leave space. For digression, for feeling, for reassembly. «Everyone thinks differently. Everyone reads differently.»

One of her projects takes us to Cyprus. There, Barba has built a cinema in the UN-controlled buffer zone between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish Cypriot north. It took seven years for her to obtain the necessary permits.

The space functions as a real cinema, but also as a sculpture. A screen can be set up, and people can come from both sides. Most of the time, the structure stands empty. And that is precisely where its power lies: it is a space of possibility.

“The north and the south are connected by this cinema”, says Barba. It is a place where people can meet. Not as a grand gesture of resolution, but rather as a framework. As an opening.

Where does the inspiration for such works come from? Barba doesn’t speak of flashes of genius. Rather, of receptiveness. Of reading, travelling, conversations, chance encounters. Sometimes a sentence opens a door. Sometimes a landscape. Sometimes a person telling a story about how something is grown in a particular country.

“Anyone who works artistically has a porous skin”, she says. This porosity is important not only for art, but also for empathy. For society. For the ability to remain breathable.

For our world is becoming narrower, more curated, more pre-programmed. The mobile phone shows us many things, but often not the open. There is choice, but little permeability. Barba’s works, by contrast, feel like spaces into which one is not led, but invited. Her art, says Barba, is meant to remind us to remain sponges. Not in the sense of soaking everything up, but in the sense of remaining receptive.

Rosa Barba is an artist and filmmaker. She was born in Agrigento, Sicily, grew up in Germany, and works across film, sculpture, installation, sound and language. Since 2023, she has been Professor of Art in Space and Time at ETH Zurich. In 2026, she will receive the Zurich Art Prize and present the solo exhibition «Thick Harmonies» at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv.