Barbara Sbrocca’s practice crosses relational and participatory art, painting, sculpture, installation, sound, voice and writing. She has collaborated with artists from different disciplines, particularly jazz musicians, and exhibited in Italy and internationally.
Her first book, Umano come me, was published in 2007.

Her experience in radio and audio blogging nurtured her passion for listening to the breath, pace and hesitations in people’s voices. Recording, editing and composing with sound and voices are part of the way she creates the audio portraits, pillar of the Baci Sospesi project.

In 2023 she founded, with 6 friends, Blu Shabaka APS, a non-profit organization devoted to socially-engaged art and creative practices for community wellbeing. She also created The Italian Reading Room, where she works with adult learners on Italian prosody, reading, voice and presence.

More about Barbara’s work: sbrocca.com.

Art, voice and presence

In Barbara’s practice, a voice is body, biography, memory, culture and the space a person allows themselves to occupy. Listening and reading aloud are practices of presence, both personal and collective. Her experience with radio and audio blogging, including the program Vive e Vegeta and the audio blog Miusli, belongs in this research.

She mainly works with painting, sculpture, sound and words, to generate interaction and dialogue among strangers, and plant hope, in public spaces.

Her work has been featured in national and international publications, television programmes, podcasts and a documentary by Italian director and author Massimo D’Orzi.
A new documentary, this time about Baci Sospesi, is in the making, thanks to the work of Portuguese video artist Pedro Tomás.

It takes a village…

When an image arises, Barbara starts looking for help to bring it to life. Because… “we don’t go anywhere alone”.
This path includes conversations with friends and strangers, communities and institutions, artists and craftspeople. “It’s a ripple effect, a current of love.”

Baci Sospesi grew this way: from an image emerged during the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, to audio portraits, messages, installations and labs.

It takes a village of friends, acquaintances and strangers willing to help, to make ideas real, to manage the actions through which projects become tangible, and to eventually have an impact on the public space and the community life for good. I am deeply grateful to each and every one of the people who joined me, and supported the project in every shape or form.

Barbara Sbrocca

Empathy, courage, accountability and action. Those values still shape the project today in its growing journey around the world. Without the human community that gathers around the project, Baci Sospesi would still be a dream.
Instead, it’s real. And we need it now more than ever. So…

Thank you.

Yes this is personal: I created Baci Sospesi in 2020 and I remain responsible for its artistic and ethical continuity, as per the guidelines expressed in the Manifesto and each collaboration agreement signed along the way. Participation brings other people’s experiences and practices into the work, and every single contribution is relevant.

So, let me express my profound gratitude to all the people who made this project possible so far. In chronological order of appearance:
Valentina, Roberto, Quinto, Angelo, Carla, Vincenzo, Piero, Stefano, Lorema, Matteo, Fausta, Paulo and ALL the artists who participated in the Leiria workshop and exhibitions, Lidia, Susana, Patricia, Abílio, Alcina, Pedro, Grilo, and then Dino, Tricia, Andy, Simon, Debs, Tony, the Municipality of Leiria and the people at the Museu Moinho do Papel, the artists who participated in the Sprouting Lab in Berlin, the people who are still sharing around the world the mini-posters created in that Lab, Claire, all the podcasters and journalists who supported Baci Sospesi since the beginning with an interview, all the story-donors whose names and identities remain anonymous, and last but not least all the people who left and keep leaving messages in the installations, taking pics and sharing them online…
THANK YOU

Barbara Sbrocca