Rosa Barba

The sculpture Sea Sick Passenger Letterbox (2016) continues the formal language and concerns of its predecessor Sea Sick Passenger (2014), a large felt 'screen‘ presenting a cut-out text and laid on the floor. While the text on the felt screen is only legible in parts by looking down as you walk around it, Sea Sick Passenger Letterbox compresses the actual cut-out felt letters in a sealed glass container – similar to a blackbox its content is encrypted, yet seemingly accessible through the transparent glass. Language is decomposed in this bottled message, a translation of sorts, opening up to new possible meanings. As Ben Borthwick put it, “The reader becomes the editor, sequencing these fragments into new narratives.”