Rosa Barba Awarded 2026 Zurich Art Prize
125Aug. 7, 2025
Berlin-based Italian artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba has been named the winner of the nineteenth Zurich Art Prize, according to German magazine Monopol. The honor is presented annually by Zurich’s Museum Haus Konstruktiv and the Zurich Insurance Company in recognition of an artistic practice fusing “the cultural heritage of constructivist-concrete and conceptual art [with] contemporary trends,” per a press release, with previous winners including Leonor Antunes, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Tino Sehgal. Barba, whom the jury commended for her sensitivity to the surrounds in which her works are exhibited, is the first Italian artist to win the accolade since it was established in 2007. She will receive 100,000 CHF ($124,000) to be put toward a show at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, as well as an additional 30,000 CHF ($37,000) in prize money. Born in 1972 in Agrigento in Sicily, Barba was educated at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and since 2023 has been professor of Art in Space and Time at the ETH Zurich Department of Architecture. Barba is known for conceptual installations, sculptures, and films investigating themes such as time, memory, perception, and the impact of humans on nature, with light, sound, and historical machines such as projectors and typewriters playing major roles in her immersive installations. Barba’s most recent institutional exhibition, “The Ocean of One’s Pause,” which closed last month at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, looked back at fifteen years of her practice and presented a new commission, Charge, which investigated light as a catalyst for ecological change and scientific innovation. “As human beings, we are animated by the desire for a better future,” she told the Brooklyn Rail’s Francesca Pietropaolo this past June. “I don’t want to let that hope go. I do believe that there are ways through which things can be turned around, transformed. If one just takes a different perspective, new ideas can spark, and with them a new sense of energy, of possibility.” Related Marina Abramović and Peter Doig Win Praemium Imperiales Warhol Foundation Announces Spring 2025 Grantees