Image: Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon
Rosa Barba’s first major exhibition in Portugal, 'Desenhar Vocabulários', is on view at Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon from 16 May to 28 September 2026. Installed in the Nave and Mezanino, the show brings together site-specific installations, performance, film and sound, and is presented as a work that unfolds across space rather than as a single-screen cinema presentation.
The exhibition positions Barba’s practice around the material presence of celluloid, film apparatus and sound. According to the CAM text, these elements are used not only to make moving images but also as autonomous sculptural components. The exhibition is described as functioning simultaneously as a three-dimensional film and as a musical score, with cinema allowing time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap and expand.
Barba’s work is regularly concerned with the overlap of natural landscapes and human-made environmental change, archive histories and future visions, as well as the connections between astronomy and cinema. The CAM presentation notes that impermanence runs through her thinking, whether in materials, images or thought itself. The title 'Desenhar Vocabulários' is presented as a suggestion of open, unstable processes and as an invitation to reconsider cinematic space and apparatus beyond conventional film viewing.
The exhibition also marks a significant institutional arrangement at CAM. Barba is the third artist given total freedom to intervene in the Nave with her own work and to select works from the CAM Collection, building a multilayered narrative across the Mezanino. In the lower gallery, each selected Collection work enters into a dialogue with Barba’s universe; the artist chose pieces that emphasize the visual quality of words and writing and their affinity with her own creative process.
CAM says the curatorial approach draws on Barba’s longstanding interest in archives, storage and memory, where reality and fiction meet to form new narratives and latent dialogues. The exhibition also explores how archives can construct non-linear experiences of time. The installed works include visual and sound environments with varying light intensity, intermittency and overlapping sound stimuli, and the venue warns that these characteristics may cause sensory fatigue or discomfort during the visit.
The exhibition is curated by Benjamin Weil and Rosa Barba, and the page notes partner institutions MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti di Secolo XXI in Italy and The Barbican Centre in the United Kingdom. The related publication 'Rosa Barba. Impermanence in Fields' was issued for the occasion of the exhibition and gathers essays and an interview, mapping the intellectual territory around Barba’s performances, films and exhibitions. The book is published in English and listed as edited in 2026 by Hatje Cantz, CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, MAXXI and Proyecto AMIL. At CAM, the exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00, and on Saturdays until 21:00.
