Since then, we have incorporated figures of boys in sculptures such as “The Experiment” (2011), which shows a pre-teenage boy standing in front of a mirror wearing a pair of high-heels and with a lipstick smudge on his face. This work speaks more about coming to terms with growing up, personal experimentation and awareness of one’s sexuality. Recently, we’ve made two further sets of sculptures featuring kids, which are both currently being exhibited at Pace Gallery in New York, as part of our show “The Nervous System”. “Short Story” (2020) is a large installation that consists of two boys cast in bronze situated on a tennis court in positions as if they’ve just completed a frustrating tennis match. It generally talks about futile competitiveness. And “Boy With Gun” (2021), our newest work is a bronze figure of a young boy staring out through a lightbox showing a grey sky as if it were a window. His hands are resting upon his head as he holds a gun also cast in bronze, as if in indecision. Neither of these works reference personal experiences of ours, but they do raise themes that are in many ways identifiable—like competition, frustration, or isolation. We suppose that expressing an idea through the perspective of childhood means that different nuances can be accentuated or simplified. Children’s body language can often reveal much more than adults’.

We are all still amazed about your “Prada Marfa” installation, could you talk about it for our readers.

We made “Prada Marfa” in 2005 and the idea behind it was initially intended to be a sort of experiment, an exploration of how Land Art could look at the turn of the millennium. We wanted to see how a designer store would survive if it was displaced, uprooted from the usual metropolitan environment. So, “Prada Marfa” is a forever-closed luxury boutique situated in the middle of the desert on a long highway in Texas, about 60 km from the nearest town, Marfa. Inside the minimal structure built of adobe bricks, on the shelves of the boutique is Prada’s collection of stilettos and handbags from 2005—the same ones that were installed there sixteen years ago. Since then, the work and the landscape around it have stayed almost exactly the same, despite almost everything else in the world having changed. It’s now like a surreal time capsule, but one that has taken on a life of its own. Since the rise of social media, “Prada Marfa” has also become a tourist destination, following posts by Beyoncé in front of it, or appearances in popular TV series such as Gossip Girl and The Simpsons. This almost adds to the sense of “otherness” surrounding the work, which is so remote and off the beaten track. The nearest airport is three hours away.

Can you expand on the relation between your current show “The Nervous System” at Pace Gallery and the notion of domestic space? Is it related to the current global situation?

Our exhibition “The Nervous System” at Pace Gallery in New York is a slightly surreal home-like environment inside the gallery’s ground floor space. Two domestic zones are created by rugs on the floor, one with holes in it, the other with tallies like those associated with days counted in a prison. Sculptural human figures are spaced out within the gallery space: one of a painter standing with an arm stretching out as if applying a brushstroke to a canvas, another is the aforementioned little boy cast in bronze staring out of a window, a third figure is of an older sleeping man in a wheelchair. Behind a glazed wall, faux outside, is also “Short Story”, an almost full-scale installation of a tennis court with the sculptures Flo and Kev, figures of boys who have just finished a match. Even though separated by the glass, this scene becomes an integral part of the twisted overall narrative. It seems that all these characters are related somehow, but still all isolated and consumed by their own interior worlds. An inscription on the fireplace reads: “The Oracles are Gone and Lost Are the Gods”. Maybe this gives a hint to how the show relates to a general state of mind globally. The concept for the exhibition was developed over the last year and although it is not about the pandemic, there is perhaps also a sense of disconnectedness that is tied to the experience of lockdown.