The white cube is packed and the boxes are ventilated; sisters Dina and Julia Boswank are working together for the first time for this exhibit at Satellit Berlin. Although they work in different mediums, Dina using video and sound and Julia working with drawing and collage, they are interested in bringing their practices side by side to create parallels between their works. This white cube is not packed only once; the exhibit will take on three new appearances as the two sisters’ work evolves in conjunction with each other.

In Dina’s sound piece, conceived before the exhibition, voices emerge from the handle holes of two cardboard boxes mounted on the wall. In the piece on the right, two people can be heard describing in detail the surrounding walls and stairs during a speedy flight up a staircase. This space being described, however, is not real, but it is a script constructed from real role-playing exercises. In the other box plays a string of spoken words, this time a script of compiled answers from the community in response to the question “what are you fighting for?” Together, these two sound works represent different imagined realities, one of an imagined space, and one of an imagined goal.

Dina’s work has acted as a starting point for Julia’s collage drawings. The works made in the back room of the gallery were made while listening to Dina’s role-playing sound piece. In the sound work, the voices are trying to create an accurate account of an invented space. Julia is also creating her own invented spaces but in physical form. The physicality of Julia’s work is most striking in the mostly white collages in the main room, across from the boxes. The layering of negative cut outs creates a tangible differentiation within the picture plane, poetic abstractions.

Dina scanned these collages to make the video work on the floor. The pixels are moving busily, but once in a while some will slow down to reveal the forms of Julia’s drawings.

Julia, inspired by the pixels of her sister’s video and the sound of her sister’s box work, created the work on the floor to tie some of the formal elements of the room together. The different materials compressed to make the fabric mirror the pixilation of the video. The work also acts as a “sound carpet”, sound extends everywhere, and so does the work on the floor.  It is also a new material that has potential to be worked into her collages.

Dina has installed the remnants from Julia’s collage process on the gallery window, transforming the window into another wall of the gallery, making the cube more complete.

Although it is clear that the content of their works is influenced by the other’s, neither sister compromises their own method of working. The visible process of making the drawings and collages is what gives Julia’s work its substance, whereas the processes behind Dina’s work are hidden from view. This relationship between process and product creates the tension in the room, since the conceptual framework of each artist’s pieces are so tightly intertwined.

Make sure to attend the final opening this Saturday at 7pm in order to see the last iteration of the show!