Marbles is a transgeneric love story about conflict and relationship dynamics, refraction and fragmentation. The exhibition consists of a series of sculptural interventions and a film, presented in four chapters with an asynchronous soundtrack. Set within a domestic, yet alienating space, the film gradually turns into a hall of broken mirrors as the two protagonists (assumed lovers) unwillingly play out a dialectical game of recognition and estrangement. They may want the same, feel the same, but contradiction has become the only possible movement as the identity of each is a reduction to a mirrored singularity, a totality, therefore, a stopping of movement.

The title of the show, Marbles, refers to both the combative and psychological aspects of relationship conflicts: playing with and potentially losing one’s marbles, serving heartbreaking oneliners towards that other person for all the marbles worth. In the exhibition, such marbles form a column that reveals and disguises what is at stake, while the fragmented desires and fears of the protagonists continually play each other off the board. Meanwhile, the changing perspectives – the mirror effect – removes any chances of reconciliation and leaves the scene unsettled and fractured.

Text by Kristian Schrøder, from Pachinko Gallery, Oslo. Printed handout with text by Maíra Botelho.

    

Installation view Marbles at Ostra Practice, Lisbon, by Sofie Amalie Andersen & Thyra Dragseth, 2024. Birthday Cake 21x14,8 cm (2024).