Maria Barnas

In Rhubarb, Rhubarb Barnas developed a series of glass objects, in which she has spoke words into during the blowing of the glass. In the first group she chose words that are used to mimic distant group speech in films, words such as 'rhubarb' and 'watermelon cantaloupe’. Speaking this language of mimicry by herself, resulting in the first word group, and thereby extracting a single voice from the crowd, Barnas expresses an intense solitude of the individual as opposed to a group. The glass speech bubbles, frozen word splashes in space, reveal something of the absurdity of group behaviour and the spoken and unspoken language that goes along with it.