The Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, in collaboration with the 25 FPS - International Experimental Film and Video Festival, presents Meaning Distances, the first solo exhibition in Croatia of artist Rosa Barba (Agrigento, 1972), among the most recognized voices in the international contemporary visual arts and film scene. The exhibition will open to the public on Sept. 23, 2025, and will remain on view until Nov. 9, fitting into the program of the 21st edition of the 25 FPS festival. The exhibition is curated by Morana Matković (MSU), Marina Kožul, Nika Petković, Tena Trstenjak (25 FPS), Studio Rosa Barba.
Meaning Distances brings together a selection of works that reflect Barba’s deepened interest in the instability of knowledge and the potential of filmic matter. Since the beginning of her career, developed at the intersection of cinema and visual arts, the artist has questioned conventional modes of fruition and narration, expanding the limits of what can be observed and how stories unfold in space and time. His practice considers cinema as a set of elements, from film to projection, sound to image and text, to be broken down, reorganized and combined into new constellations.
"The works presented in the exhibition Meaning Distances," reads the curatorial text, "are imbued with an inescapable sense of the limits of human perspective in the face of the unstoppable movement of the world. Rejecting univocal and dominant narratives, Rosa Barba creates a space in which voids, intervals and discontinuities collectively participate in establishing relationships between distant layers of meaning."
Through intentional fragmentation, Barba breaks traditional cinematic hierarchies, allowing the viewer to experience film as a sculptural and spatial installation. The works in the exhibition show the artist’s attention to the material nature of cinema and the possibilities of perception offered by the exhibition space. The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Studio Rosa Barba and with the support of the Zagreb City Office for Culture, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the Kultura Nova Foundation, the Croatian Film Directors’ Guild, the Zagreb Tourist Board and the Goethe Institut.
Barba’s work explores concepts of permanence and impermanence, reality and fiction, through a repertoire that spans sculpture, installation and cinema. The artist uses performance as a research method, analyzing the complex workings of cinematic apparatus, the instability of knowledge and the complex nature of astronomical phenomena. His works relate space, time and language, proposing a reinterpretation of traditional concepts of narrative and meaning. Natural landscapes and human-induced transformations in the environment assume central roles in Barba’s films, serving as tools for observing political and cultural transformations. Cinema, in her hands, becomes matter with which to investigate theoretical and abstract conditions of space and time, combining light and sound in measurable and conceptually articulated ways.
Rosa Barba has exhibited in numerous international contexts, with works in public and private collections. Recent solo exhibitions include MoMA in New York (2025), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2023), Tate Modern in London (2023), Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2021-2022), Hangar Bicocca in Milan (2017), Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (2017), Secession in Vienna (2017), and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (2016). Barba has also participated in major biennials and festivals, including the 53rd and 56th Venice Biennale and Performa (2013).
The Sept. 23 opening will include a meeting with the artist at 6 p.m., followed by the official opening at 7 p.m. and a musical performance by Ivona Eterović (tonota). The new edition of the publication Printed Cinema #25: Charge will also be presented at the event.
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| Rosa Barba on show in Zagreb: "Meaninging Distances" is her first solo exhibition in Croatia |
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