Miami Art Basel

Lombard-Freid Fine Arts presented Letter to the Censors at the art fair Miami Art Basel in December 2003 and it was from this show that Tate bought the work.

Tate curator Tanya Barson describes the experience of discovering the work:

With stricter controls under the Bush administration the Department of Homeland Security failed to process his visa request and Garaicoa was unable to travel to Miami. Consequently assistants and staff from his gallery installed the work. ‘My friends kept calling me and e-mailing about the work and to find out when I would arrive. It was so sad’. Carlos Garaicoa quoted by Marc Spiegler in Artnews, March 2005, p. 99

In the display in Miami, the model was placed on a red carpet in the centre of a room surrounded by the light boxes which were hung on the walls. Spot lights were fixed to the bottom of the walls pointing downwards. At certain points of the day the roof covering the equipment had to be removed because of a problem with heat build up.