Borderlands
World Refugee Day, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv
Today is World Refugee Day and we would like to draw the attention of visitors to the problem of crossing borders and boundaries. A refugee is an official term for a person who due to certain circumstances has been forced to move beyond the borders of their own country. However, beside state borders, there are also mental boundaries which divide our society. Thus one is constantly surrounded by borders-boundaries of thinking, even without moving anywhere. The space of our lives is - borderlands. This space is alive, dynamic and constantly changing. But why borders and boundaries are so important to us? Why do we create them?
We, authors of the project “Donbass Odyssey”, outlined an improvised border in the yard of Mystetskyi Arsenal. We used simple rock salt from Artemivsk, which could be found in almost any Ukrainian kitchen. This fragile material is a metaphor of how ambivalent borders and boundaries are, and how they change throughout their existence. Mental, bodily, geographical and political borders/boundaries are not static and depend on many factors, such as human activity, for example.
Would visitors of Mystetskyi Arsenal notice this border? What would be their reaction? Would this frontier remain intact, or would it lose its shape?
Today is World Refugee Day and we would like to draw the attention of visitors to the problem of crossing borders and boundaries. A refugee is an official term for a person who due to certain circumstances has been forced to move beyond the borders of their own country. However, beside state borders, there are also mental boundaries which divide our society. Thus one is constantly surrounded by borders-boundaries of thinking, even without moving anywhere. The space of our lives is - borderlands. This space is alive, dynamic and constantly changing. But why borders and boundaries are so important to us? Why do we create them?
We, authors of the project “Donbass Odyssey”, outlined an improvised border in the yard of Mystetskyi Arsenal. We used simple rock salt from Artemivsk, which could be found in almost any Ukrainian kitchen. This fragile material is a metaphor of how ambivalent borders and boundaries are, and how they change throughout their existence. Mental, bodily, geographical and political borders/boundaries are not static and depend on many factors, such as human activity, for example.
Would visitors of Mystetskyi Arsenal notice this border? What would be their reaction? Would this frontier remain intact, or would it lose its shape?