Ro~Sa, founded in 2004 is a collaboration between artists Robin Assner (St. Louis, MO) and Sarah Bauer (Milwaukee, WI). Meeting at an artist residency, Assner and Bauer recognized in each other a deep, shared interest in exploring ideas about the nature of human experience. The collaboration enables a unique formation of ideas to coalesce into art that addresses issues of the power of ideas, objects and rituals, the body, women's role in society, and the human quest for happiness. As humans, even when we are faced with the most horrific and tragic situations we often revert to maintaining a sense of hope as a fundamental way of coping with our difficult and painful emotions and experience. We even maintain hope in the face of darkness, and—despite a sense of the betrayal of forces outside oneself—that might seem to render a situation futile.

Acts of Hope and Futility is a long-term, multi-part, multi-disciplinary series of artworks that include performance, photography, video and installation and draws from mundane, but meaningful experiences of everyday life. Assner and Bauer are interested in how the relationship between hope and futility is as complex as the human psyche.

Acts of Hope and Futility examines the human condition and the dilemmas core to the complexity of the human experience. In this ongoing project, familiar actions are isolated allowing the viewer to meditate on the action without other visual distraction. These actions, innocent, simple, honest and vulnerable, have an intrinsic sense of beauty about them and touch upon a vulnerable human soft spot called hope. Throughout the series there is an underlining sense of humor in addition to a rich visual sensibility.

A solo exhibition of Ro~Sa’s work from Acts of Hope and Futility was presented at the Duluth Art Institute in Duluth, MN, from
February 12–June 3, 2009.