Memory, despite our best efforts, is subject to decay. Mail to the Afterlife reflects on how societies forget—how repetition replaces reflection as attention spans shorten and our capacity for long-term thinking erodes. The sculpture, a painted fiberglass skull, uses mail as a metaphor for collective memory. In the United States, the deliberate exchange of personal letters is in sharp decline, and USPS locations are being consolidated (to the detriment of many Americans living in rural areas).

Letters enter through the skull’s nose and eyes, reappearing at the back. Swirls of mail move through a cavern of stacked shipping boxes. Within this system, repair and daily operation require destruction. Mail must be shredded in the “Lethe,” the mythic river of forgetting. New mail, new memories, arrive each day. Yet the destruction of memory prevents growth, leaving the system suspended in a strange limbo.

Rachel Kamata, born and raised in San Antonio, currently works as a printmaker and contemporary artist. She graduated with her B.A. in International Relations and Studio Art from the University of Rochester in 2025. Rachel has a depth of experience in public murals, education, and sustainability centered initiatives. At the core of her creative practice lies storytelling, a powerful tool she employs through a multimedia approach to vividly and, at times, ironically or sarcastically, portray our interactions with Earth and with one another.