Since 2010, Anne Marie and Julia Rooney have used the U.S. Postal Service as a medium and site for collaboration, production, and distribution of visual and text-based work. Sending mixed media mail between apartments in Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, the Rooneys’ shared practice reclaims the unwieldy histories often held in found objects, texts, and images, transforming them into new works. 

In FLATS, Julia indexes selections of Anne Marie’s mail into strange new configurations, highlighting the artists’ work over fifteen years of distanced collaboration. Sandwiching and framing Anne Marie’s mailed items between plexiglass sheets, Julia references the U.S. Postal Service’s process of scanning every item that passes through its system. Presented as a series of themed “Flats” showcasing artwork that traveled at the flat rate of a stamp, each new composition names, collects, and rethinks the meaning of a longitudinal relationship. Where sometimes visual repetition is the common denominator, other “Flats” frame the very act of mail-sending, highlighting hand-cancellations, postmarks, and other evidence of the various hands through which each piece of mail passed. In this, the Rooneys posit the act of sending mail as fundamentally collaborative, each postcard or letter authored by artist and postal worker alike. Over the show’s monthlong run, new work by Anne Marie will continue to accrue in the gallery, delivered daily by mail carrier. 

Accompanying the “Flats” is Informed Delivery, a new video work documenting a 3-mile walk from the National Mall to the main post office branch of Washington D.C. In Informed Delivery, Julia carries a plexiglass sculpture painted with a unique IMI code generated from the U.S. Postal Service’s Click-N-Ship® technology. Introduced in 2004, this service allows customers to pay for their postage at home by entering the weight, size, and distance traveled of their package, thereby generating accurate postage as a one-time scannable code. Playing on the idea of “being scanned,” Anne Marie videorecords Julia carrying this unwieldy sculpture, changing its configuration from a cube full of mail, to a flattened box, and finally to a disassembled set of 6 squares, which are then mailed in parts to the gallery. 

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the postal service, making it an older public institution than the country itself. At a time when this essential public service is increasingly threatened with privatization, the Rooneys’ work recenters the mail as an indispensable site of care, collaboration, and community-building.