If you thought the Pre-Raphaelites were preoccupied with depicting women in their paintings, the Hausberger sisters would beg to differ. Womanhood takes a strong place in their artwork, having been surrounded by fashion magazines since they were little. Their work bends and breaks at the female body - often depicted as distorted and manipulated - to counter common understandings of body image, women and identity. Mel and Steph Hausberger studied Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They are currently spending time on the Tyrolean mountains where their family’s cottage lies and where they grew up.

Have you been painting since you were little?

We started drawing when we were very little, painting we started much later.

What is your preferred material?

Oil sticks and pastels are a favourite for drawings since we can easily take them with us when travelling. But lately we rediscovered charcoal which of course is something we used a lot in art school. For painting, we use both acrylics and oil.

Women are a recurrent subject in your art. They are often depicted as being in repose or in distorted positions. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

We were always drawn to the female figure. It certainly has to do with our own struggles with our bodies and with being twins, we grew up comparing each other a lot. But also we think that we just saw so much art depicting the female figure that over time, it became natural for us to use women in our work. And also growing up we looked a lot at fashion/art magazines, so the female figure is just ingrained in us.

For some reason, we like it if the figures look a bit uncomfortable. For us, it adds to the attraction. It can be a bit “off”.

Perhaps 'non-definitive' is a term that can capture your painting style. There is a strong tactile sense in the way you situate bodies next to each other, and in turn, these bodies are themselves not fully complete or finished, leaving a very transitory feeling. Can you elaborate on this?

Well, our figures are never perfect just as the human figure isn't perfect. Perfection doesn't exist, something can always be better. But it's freeing to realize this and often we leave a figure consciously “unfinished” since for us it feels “finished”. Too much information leaves no room for imagination, it gives too much away and we want to avoid that.

Can you walk us through your drawing process? Do you draw together and do you discuss ideas with each other before starting a painting or do you draw ex tempore?

We definitely discuss a lot before we start a painting - we talk about our ideas and somehow join them in our heads. Since we look at a lot of art together we use a lot of references. Probably nobody would understand what we are talking about but we both feel we can “see” what the other “sees” in her head...

Are all of your paintings collaborative or do you still produce artwork separately?

Every piece bigger than A4 size (30 x 20cm) is produced together. With small pieces we switch around .The other will always at least add a little something, to add her own individual touch, that's important to us.

We both prefer to work together on a piece. It’s much more interesting if our two different perspectives are joined together and also one cannot really control the outcome, which makes it more exciting.

Recently Rosalisa Dinatale beautifully shot a video of you in a huge forest painting together on a large white canvas overhearing the chirping of birds. Does the idyllic landscape of Tyrol, where you grew up, influence your practice in some way?

We both are very sensitive to surroundings, so inevitably the mountain landscape we grew up in influenced us, just as living in NY for many years has. Nature was our first playing ground, and is often visible in our work, maybe because for us nature is timeless. Also, nature acts as a retreat or escape and art is also in a way about escape from reality. When we were young we hiked a lot of mountains, it’s similar to actually creating a work of art: you have to have the stamina to get to the top or to finish a work until it's done. In between there are maybe moments where you doubt yourself to make it but you have to push through. We’d like to think we learned our grit from it.

The video, which was actually shot as part of the fall fashion campaign for Arthur Arbesser, shows us painting on the field of our family's mountain cottage, where we often draw or paint since we were little. Our family has no artistic background yet art and creativity were always present in its own way.

In Spring 2014 you have done performance art in '14 Rooms' with famous artists such as Damien Hirst and under the curatorship of Hans Ulrich Obrist. Can you tell us a bit more about this? How was this experience for you?

It was a lucky coincidence that they casted us and it was an interesting experience to see how such a projects come together. We were required to do the exact same thing - for example, down to turning the same page of a book at the same time for hours over the length of the Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland which was actually quite easy and came natural to us since we anyways unconsciously often do the same thing.

Are you working on a piece right now?

There is sort of a list of paintings/drawings in our heads which we finally have to bring to light but besides that, we allow ourselves to explore and work on paintings which are just enjoyable to make, they are about the process so to speak.

Ok, I want to turn the discussion towards literature now. Does literature ever inform your artwork?

We read a lot in our teenage years and actually also wrote - but we are very visual types so drawing and painting always took over. We were and still are fascinated by classical German Fairy Tales such as Hoffman’s ”Struwwelpeter” and Grimms Fairy Tales, we had large thick books of all those tales and they were our early inspirations when we drew together when little.

Do you have any novels that you truly hold close to your heart?

Joan Didion “Blue Nights”, Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and Salinger's “Franny & Zooey”