Zurich Art Prize 2026: Rosa Barba

The Zurich Art Prize, awarded annually by the Museum Haus Konstruktiv and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd., will go to Rosa Barba (born in Agrigento, Sicily) in 2026. She is the 19th winner of this prestigious award. The prize, which from 2026 will be worth CHF 130,000, comprises a budget of CHF 100,000 for the production of a solo exhibition at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv and a cash prize of CHF 30,000.

Rosa Barba’s work moves between film, sculpture and installation, with the boundaries between them being fluid. Central themes include processes of transformation, perception and inscription – in both a material and an ideal sense. A defining feature is her interest in the interconnection of art and science, which manifests itself both in her filmic work and in her engagement with landscapes or so-called ecologies of the future. In the past, her gaze has particularly often turned to the desert – a space between emptiness, memory and imaginative projection.

Her film works often begin as documentaries but drift into fictional realms. Reality becomes narrative material that is constantly reshaping itself. The focus is always on the specific location – complete with its traces, stories and urgent political (often precarious) dimensions. These parameters, which Barba regards as archival material, serve not only for reconstruction but are actively reinterpreted and transferred into new contexts. And so the artist allows us to immerse ourselves in ‘open archival structures’, as she herself calls them, which manifest themselves in expansive projections between matter and concept. Language and poetics also play an important role in this.

A hallmark of Barba’s work is the visualisation of filmic technology. It is not merely about movement within the image and the image’s mobility, but also about the kinetic potential of the presentation itself. Projectors, film reels, beams of light, radiations – artificial and natural – are integral components of the installation and become sculptural figures. The performative potential is tested, expanded, exhausted. This gives rise to installations that themselves resemble landscapes: light, sound, movement and technical apparatus form both immaterial and tangibly concrete structures. They invite not only contemplation, but also walking through and exploration. In this way, Barba extends the cinematic space into the physical environment.

The Zurich Art Prize jury was particularly impressed by Rosa Barba’s conceptual approach, which relates strongly to the specific space at hand and thus produces an extremely diverse range of results.

From 1993 to 1995, Barba studied theatre and film studies in Erlangen, Germany, and attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne from 1995 to 2000. She was artist-in-residence at Atelier Calder, France, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas (selection). Barba has participated in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including at the following museums: Museum of Modern Art, New York (2025); MALI Museo, Peru (2024); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2024); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023); Tate Modern, London (2023); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2017); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2017); Secession, Vienna (2017); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main (2016). Works by Barba were also on display at the 53rd and 56th Venice Biennale and the Performa Biennale (2013) (selection).

Since 2023, Barba has been Full Professor of Art in Space and Time at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich.

The jury for the Zurich Art Prize 2026 comprised: Sabine Schaschl, Director of Museum Haus Konstruktiv (Chair); Carin Gantenbein, Head of Professional Liability at Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. in Zurich; Matthias Mühling, Director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; Filipa Oliveira, Director of the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado, Lisbon; Stella Rollig, Director General and Scientific Director of the Belvedere Museum, Vienna

The Zurich Art Prize is a cultural initiative of Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.