Simone Barros, a Cabo Verdean American artist, creates experimental films, plays, installations and sound projects. She plays with deconstructing cinematic forms, visual and audio juxtapositions, sensorial illusion and hyperrealism.
Recent projects examine the intersection of science and history, the physics of perception, multilingualism in the Cabo Verdean diaspora and challenge hierarchical notions between history and memory, thought and language, society and identity.
The Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery (2024), The 8th Floor by Shelley and Donald Rubin (2023), Cosmic Rays Film Festival (2023), MONO XVI Cinematic Arts Festival (2022), Cleveland International Film Festival (2019) and Chagrin Documentary Film Festival (2019) screened Simone’s works. Third Coast International Audio Festival featured Simone’s soundscape in their 2020 Third Place Audio Festival Workshop and the On Air Festival 2021 Official Selections featured Simone’s audio drama. Cleveland Public Theatre commissioned a short film by Simone, produced her ten-minute play and staged readings of her full length plays.
Simone taught filmmaking at Pratt Institute, Cleveland Institute of Art and Cuyahoga Community College. She earned her BFA at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA at Duke University where she served as a 2022 Duke Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow. She received an Ohio Arts Council Grant Fellowship in 2016, UnionDocs Work-in-Progress Artist Residency (2023) and an Ohio Humanities Council Film Fellowship 2025-2026 with the Wexner Arts Center.
As an audiobook director, Simone helmed award-winning audiobook editions of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger, Charlie Kaufman’s Antkind and directed casts including Cynthia Ervio, Maya Hawke, Dewanda Wise and Kristen Sieh.
INterviews + Publications
“Moss and Memory,” Lumen Magazine
“Moss and Memory” by Kiley Kinnard published in Lumen magazine by the Ohio Humanities Council interviews Simone Barros about her experimental feature documentary supported by the Ohio Humanities Film Fellowship at The Wexner Art Center.
“Ohio filmmaker examines Underground Railroad through nature,” AXIOS CLEVELAND
Troy Smith, Axios Cleveland writer, highlights the aspects of Simone Barros’ most recent work, an experimental documentary film which, “has found a new way to tell the incredible story of the Underground Railroad,” exploring the relationship between the Underground Railroad and moss, the Eve of terrestrial plant life.
Ohio Humanities and the Wexner Center for the Arts Announce the Ohio Humanities Film Fellow for 2025-2026
Rebecca Brown Asmo, executive director of Ohio Humanities, notes: “Ohio Humanities is proud to support and center artists such as Simone, who are documenting and telling the stories of Ohio. It is critically important to provide resources and funding to give these artists the space and time to generate this work that will spark dialogue and conversation across our communities.”
Barros joins the seven fellows selected in previous years: Mary Jo Bole, Zeinabu irene Davis, Eli Hiller, Kiubon Kokko, Lindsey Martin, Ruun Nuur, and Benny Zelkowicz.
Queer-World Mending 68th Flaherty FIlm Seminar Publication
“Visual Sovereignty at the Flaherty” by Simone Barros published by Flaherty Film. The annual Flaherty Film Seminar is revered as one of the most significant convenings around non-fiction cinema in the world.
“Film on the UNderground Railroad moving forward,” Star Beacon
Star Beacon writer, Warren Dillaway, chatted with Simone Barros and Zach Betonte on the progress of their documentary film featuring the Hubbard House, an authentic Underground Railroad stop in Ashtabula, OH situated in the Lake Erie shore.
“Film to Follow Joan Southgate, Hubbard HousE,” Star Beacon
Star Beacon writer, Dan Hiner, interviews Simone Barros, Zach Betonte and Joan Southgate about their documentary film portraying Joan experience walking five hundred nineteen mile from southern Ohio to Canada when she was seventy-three years old. Joan’s walk traces authenticated stops on the Underground Railroad. Joan describes her walk as fueled by her desire to know the people who fought for their freedom through the Underground Railroad, “Who were these people, these people who walked and how did they do it?”
Arts Cleveland proudly presents Simone Barros as a 2016 Creative Workforce Fellow
The Creative Workforce Fellowship is a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, made possible by the generous support of Cuyahoga County residents through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. “I am producing and directing Freedom Runners, an essay film drawing the psychological space and time of Joan Southgate’s journey walking from the present into the past covering the distance of the Underground Railroad from Ohio’s southernmost tip to Canada.” – Simone Barros
Creative Compass sits down with filmmaker, Simone Barros, to discuss her short film and artistic influences
“Artistic success is simply staking out regular time to practice your craft and make work. It is not easy with the monetary demands of most of our lives. Thus, we often correlate artistic success with monetary success, in an effort to buy more time to practice our craft. I recently read that William Falkner wrote As I Lay Dying between midnight and 4 am over the course of six weeks while working at a power plant. Making work out of a regular practice is the success.” – Simone Barros
Tisch Special Programs recently interviewed Simone Barros, a member of the inaugural 35mm Filmmaking in Prague summer study aboard program
Simone discussed the impact this program had to her overall education, the challenges and rewards of being a pioneer in the program, and the importance of learning how to work with celluloid as a filmmaker.
Duke University MFA Experimental and Documentary Arts ’23 Graduate Simone Barros
Experimental and documentary filmmaker, audio artist, Simone Barros joins Duke University’s 2023 MFA EDA cohort.
Simone Barros 