Rosa Barba: From Source to Poem

Text(s) by Rosa Barba, Manuel Borja-Villel, Giuliana Bruno, Joan Jonas, Elisabeth Lebovici, Roberta Tenconi

Rosa Barba’s work is grounded in a careful exploration of the materiality, the devices, the production conditions, and the grammar of cinema. The monograph From Source to Poem is an entrancing account of the main motives that drive the artist’s practice, underscoring the context in which the artworks are presented at both architectural and conceptual levels.
Besides numerous films, sculptures, and works composed of light, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, and other recent exhibition venues, also features the new 35mm film From Source to Poem from 2016 for the first time in Italy. Hundreds of images from historical archives in the United States evolve into a kind of collage of the cultural legacy of a Western civilization in the twentieth century. “I would like,” says Barba, “to continue to explore the geographies that we create around us.”