→ unboxing
Unboxing, 2026
Presentation of artistic work at The University of Applied Arts Vienna
The project Unboxing explores the histories, movements, and intimate geographies of boxes we
live with. Boxes are among the most abundant and low-cost materials of everyday life, commonly
found in grocery stores, industrial settings, and domestic interiors. Their original purpose and
point of origin often dissolve over time; what remains is a neutral container, emptied of context
and ready to be reassigned.
Boxes, once designed to transport goods, belongings or inventory across oceans and supply
chains, frequently reappear in domestic settings as tools for relocation; carrying books, dishes,
clothes, or fragments of a life packed in haste. Through this shift, a container once associated
with global circulation becomes a temporary archive of personal belongings. Objects with entirely
different origins are brought into contact, forming invisible constellations that blur distinctions
between the disposable and the valuable, the functional and the sentimental.
Similarly, a shoebox initially meant to protect and display a pair of shoes, often transforms into a
private repository. Tucked away under beds or at the back of closets, it shelters small, emotionally
charged items: love letters, keepsakes, photographs, or gifts whose value resists categorization.
Within these confined spaces, objects from kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and living rooms are
suddenly compressed into bordered environments, producing accidental assemblages that are
rarely seen, acknowledged, or appreciated. These boxes become quiet stages where memory,
utility, and neglect coexist.
In Unboxing, sculptural assemblages made from grey cardboard boxes are suspended at eye
level. Their dimensions reference standardized, universal box formats — shoeboxes.
Smaller boxes nest within larger ones, while everyday objects such as spoons, shoes, or cast
plaster eggs and apples are wedged, balanced, or hidden between them.
Lids hover, lean, or remain absent, suggesting moments of access, concealment, or partial
revelation.
The walls become populated by these containers and their contents, transforming the space into
a landscape of familiar yet displaced forms. The works invite close inspection, producing a sense
of intimacy and unease — as if encountering someone else’s carefully arranged belongings,
unearthed from under a bed and exposed to public view. Unboxing reflects on containment as
both a practical necessity and a poetic gesture, asking how meaning accumulates when objects
are gathered, stored, and forgotten, and how new narratives emerge when boxes are opened,
reconfigured, or left permanently ajar.