Rosa Barba: Drawing Vocabularies

CAM—Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian will present the first solo exhibition in Portugal by the visual artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba. 

A striking installation by Rosa Barba, comprising 25 works—some of them previously unseen—will take over the CAM Nave from May 16. In parallel, on the Mezzanine, works from the CAM Collection selected by the artist will extend and reflect upon her creative process. 

Curated by Benjamin Weil, the exhibition functions as a three-dimensional film and, at the same time, as a musical score—one in which cinema allows time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap and expand. For more than twenty years, Rosa Barba has created films, sculptures, performances and large-scale, site-specific installations in which she uses celluloid film and cinematic apparatus to produce moving images that are also, in themselves, sculptural objects.

An exhibition structure, like a drawing in space, and in synergy with CAM’s architecture elegantly circles around and holds works at different heights. Visitor will encounter a dense, fragmented space transformed by the combination of films, sound pieces, projected light and sculptures.

The choreographed installation revisits and deepens several conceptual threads that the artist has been exploring. Her work often addresses the juxtaposition of natural landscapes with human-induced environmental change, archival histories and visions of the future, affinities between astronomy and cinema, and the use of non-actors as witnesses. At the core of this approach lies an ongoing reflection on impermanence—of materials, of images, and of thought itself.

The title Drawing Vocabularies suggests open-ended, unstable processes. It evokes sustained explorations of liminal spaces and the flexibility inherent in reorganising space, deconstructing the cinematic apparatus and the filmic environment to reveal spaces beyond cinema. It celebrates attentiveness and elasticity, presenting a vibrant kinetic environment that continually reorganises and reactivates its own structures.

Two new productions lie at the heart of this exhibition: Myth and Mercury (2025) and Thick Harmonies (2026).

Myth and Mercury is a 35mm film co-commissioned by CAM and MAXXI, Rome, and co-produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film and the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In this work, intergalactic particles—or grains—encounter the fireworks of a community. The piece incorporates excerpts from Antonio Gramsci’s prison writings, alongside images of the planet’s inner workings.

The other production, Thick Harmonies, is a kinetic sculpture that establishes a dialogue between the seemingly opposing concepts of perpetual recurrence and impermanence. A 35mm film loop rotates irregularly upon itself, generating a constantly shifting composition of colour and rhythm.

Publication
On the occasion of this exhibition, Rosa Barba, Impermanence in Fields will be released. The book explores the artist’s conceptual practice and brings together contributions from twenty authors: Sarat Maharaj, Felicity D.Scott, Josiah McElheny, Monica Narula, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Michael T. Taussig,  Corinne Diserens, Alessandro Rabottini, Georgia Horn, Joachim Jäger, José-Carlos Mariátegui, Emily Watlington, Siegfried Zielinkski, Benjamin Weil, Jonathan Pouthier, Francesco Stocchi, Mike Sperlinger, David Grubbs, and a conversation between Zoe Leonard and Rosa Barba.

Edited by Hatje Cantz, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, MAXXI (Rome) and Proyecto AMIL (Lima), the book serves as both a critical document on Barba’s work, and an artist’s book in its own right.

Rosa Barba  (b. 1972) is an Italian artist based in Berlin. Her work is held in numerous international collections and has been presented in recent monographic exhibitions at leading institutions such as MAXXI (Rome, 2025), MoMA (New York, 2025), the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum (Rotterdam, 2024), MALI (Lima, 2024), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2023), Tate Modern (London, 2023), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, 2021–22) among others, as well as at biennials, including the Venice Biennales (53rd and 56th) , São Paulo Biennale and Sydney Biennale. She has received the Zürich Art Prize (2026), the Calder Prize (2020) and the Prince Pierre Foundation's International Contemporary Art Prize (2015).