[Fall 2025]
The Dividing Line
by Sophie Mangado
Optica – Centre d’art contemporain, Montréal
17.01.2025 — 29.03.2025
[EXCERPT]
Thomas Kneubühler, a Swiss-born photographer and video artist living in Montreal, is interested in spaces to which access is limited. He designed the installation The Dividing Line to fit within one of the galleries at Optica. Immediately upon crossing the threshold of the exhibition space, viewers found themselves stuck between a metal barrier several metres high and photographs evoking surveillance and inhospitality, in which barbed wire and watchtowers incongruously disfigured bucolic landscapes. The result was a strange feeling of being both observed and constrained. There was nothing to do but advance through this installation, surrounded by a sense of muffled hostility.
The Dividing Line involves the southern border of Bulgaria. When the Iron Curtain was still in existence, it was impossible to cross this border to leave the country. Today, the geographic frontier has been fortified to block entrance into the European Union by refugees from West Asia. More than being exposed to an “other side” that is both fantasized and prohibited, viewers at Optica were plunged into a disturbing neutral zone.
In her essay accompanying the exhibition, the anthropologist and lawyer Petra Molnar, who studies the technologization of borders, reflected on Kneubühler’s approach. “Drones, robo-dogs, and artificial intelligence now bolster the already violent border regimes that separate families, push people into life-threatening terrain, and even result in loss of life,” Molnar wrote. “Indeed, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for people on the move seeking safety. What will 2025 bring?”
[…]
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 130 – PLANTS AND GARDENS ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: The Dividing Line]
Sophie Mangado is an independent journalist. She contributes to an eclectic range of media, including the print press and documentary productions, and coordinates a collective of photographers and journalists working with marginalized people.