Cardboard and Sisal Twine
Dimensions Vary
This site-specific iteration of the ongoing installation series Shifting Security served as the central work in the solo exhibition Shifting Securities at Galerie Vincenz Sala, Berlin, in May 2026. Constructed from hand-sewn cardboard boxes, the installation consists of two sections: one suspended overhead and another extending along the gallery wall. As with each iteration of the project, it explores the continual work of constructing, maintaining, and negotiating forms of shelter.
Originally developed in response to a transatlantic move and the search for belonging, the project has gradually become a record of its own history. Existing across multiple installations and locations—and now physically divided across an ocean—its components accumulate wear through repeated assembly, transport, and storage. Each reconfiguration leaves visible traces as the cardboard softens, folds, and slowly deteriorates.
The subtitle (on Eventualities) reflects this temporal uncertainty. The installation exists simultaneously as something coming together and coming apart, mirroring both personal and collective experiences of living with the unknown. Rather than preserving the work in a fixed state, each presentation accepts change as an integral part of the installation, raising open questions about maintenance, repair, replacement, and eventual disappearance.
As curator Helmut Bauer writes, the installation "insists on care—each cardboard box sewn together by hand, stitch by stitch," while acknowledging that "despite every effort, fragility remains."* The work embraces this tension between attentive labour and inevitable impermanence. Its openly visible construction also acknowledges that its own future remains unresolved: whether the aging components will continue to be repaired, replaced, or ultimately allowed to reach their end is a question intentionally left open.