Through their geographical location, the artists’ studios of Poush stand on a deeply significant border, which separates Paris from Clichy, Porte Pouchet, on the edge of this massive wall of concrete, highly symbolic in the Île-de-France region: the Périphérique.

In this context of permanent negotiation with these spaces crossed by distinctive flows, the artists aim to make these borders visible in another way. They sneak into their interstices as if they were walking through walls, they open breaches to capture all of their excess, they probe the fractures and scars that reflect the quiet or spectacular hybridizations which develop in these interfaces.

Starting from the tools and vehicles they have shaped for these explorations, the artists roam these physical, geographical, virtual, spiritual or abstract borders, travelling to their most infinitesimal edges, similar to the ones that determine life, through the envelope constituted by cellular membranes. These membranes are not restive and impenetrable spaces: this is why they allowed the emergence of living organisms, with their shifting and extremely porous molecular architecture, revealing constant exchanges.

BorderLine straightforwardly addresses the question of edges and overflows. The border appears to us as a non-place, a line without depth, teeming with micro-events, accidents and incidents, wars and battles, passages and travels.

The exhibition essentially explores the border in its primary dimension: the line that we cross, which separates and unites. The line, the conceptual ostinato of this exhibition, is viewed as a crossing point, which invites the spectator to consider it as a strategic, structural – and therefore political – space.

This exhibition envisions a new form of learning, starting from the margins. It particularly focuses on what William Kentridge, the South-African artist, calls “peripheral thinking”. Strangely, this peripheral thinking, too frequently set aside at first sight, is at the center of the creation process as Kentridge see it. This is the heart of the question. These ideas, which assail our minds on the border of the subject that is seen and considered, turn out to be at the root of creation. This exhibition intends to explore this process: following as many rifts as there are borders, examining the spark that persists on the periphery, precisely where those ideas come into contact.

The border, this three-faced entity – real, symbolic and imaginary – becomes the space-time in which creation emerges. For the artists, it might also be a way to speak about Poush, the shelter that has welcomed during two years of pandemic, in an office tower in Clichy, transformed into artists’ studios, on the outskirts of Paris. Two years of artistic emulation between Paris and Clichy, beyond this line made of tar: the Périphérique.

BorderLine reminds us that seeing and thinking are always a negotiation between what appears on the surface and what we project on the thing that we perceive and consider. This exhibition invites us to explore and feel the border, this area outside the norm, outside space, sometimes outside time.

With artists Bruno ALBIZZATI, June BALTHAZARD, Amélie BERNARD, Apollinaria BROCHE, Elliott CAUSSE, Grégory CHATONSKY, Pierre CLEMENT, Elena COSTELIAN, Caroline CORBASSON, Emmanuelle DUCROCQ, Adélaïde FÉRIOT, Deborah FISCHER, Pauline GUERRIER, Arash HANAEI, Anaïs LELIÈVRE, Thibault LUCAS, François MAURIN, Mathew MCWILLIAMS, Sabine MIRLESSE, Adrien MISSIKA, Honi RYAN, Edgar SARIN, Ugo SCHILDGE, Elodie SEGUIN, Alexandre SILBERSTEIN, Sarah VALENTE, Thomas VAN REGHEM, Louis VERRET, Florian VIEL, Jesse WALLACE and Ziyue ZHOU.

Curator: Yvannoé Kruger

Artistic coordinator: Lou Matthieussent

Writers of the exhibition booklet: Inès Massonie, Lou Matthieussent

Registrar: Sylvain Berst

Thanks to Rémi Muzeau, Mayor of Clichy and Vice-President of the Hauts-de-Seine department, and Luc Mercier, Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture – International Relations – Tourism, as well as Sogelym-Dixence, Marie-Sarah Adenis, Fanny Bannet, Thibaut Bruttin, Christine Camio, Alexandre Colliex, Laure Colliex, Lolita Convert and Hervé Digne.