The most provocative art pieces in Border Zones: New Art across Cultures are ones that consider the borders implicit in the space of the museum itself. Gu Xiong’s mixed-media installation Becoming Rivers physically extends beyond the walls of the museum and then travels in, above, and through spaces. Rosanna Raymond’s piece Cling to the Sea was accompanied by a performance titled SaVAge K'lub that literally travelled through spaces in the museum to address the potential of revitalizing relationships between objects and originating communities. Prabakar Visvanath’s collaboration with MOA staff reveals the potential for the simultaneous status of a secular artifact within the museum and a sacred relic animated by ritual practice from without. But it is Cell by Edward Poitras that most radically interrogates the space of the museum through tactics that include placing both a post office and a prison cell within the walls of the Audain Gallery.

The artist’s statement on the wall label for Edward Poitras’ installation asks the question, “And why is there a post office in the museum?” thus inviting us to contemplate the spaces of the museum, the institution, the prison cell, the reserve, the nation, the world, and the galaxy as cells that are distinct but at the same time are overlapping, intersecting, and embedded. Through the label, we are also informed that “…Coyote meanders off, stage left.” Coyote, the inventive but mischievous trickster, is the artist or protagonist himself; his departure is a provocation to the viewer to step in and engage with the piece. There is a mystery and we become detectives investigating it.

The clues Poitras leaves include dates, newspaper clippings, hand-written notes, missing person signs, photographs, a tall desk with citizenship applications, a glass vase filled with pins, and a seal pup. A sign invites us to take sides: “Love it or Leave it” is the first clue to the spatial operations at play in the piece. Printed onto the tall desk complete with writing implements, the viewer is asked to respond by filling out corresponding renunciation of citizenship forms. This is but one of a series of delineations across implied spatial jurisdictions that Poitras provokes us to move through and beyond.

Casually pinned to the centre lower right of a corkboard hangs a black strip of paper approximately ten inches in length. A craft-paper tag identifies the black strip as “a piece of border.” Other mechanisms of spatial delineations include the presence of a surveillance camera, and a small white room (a prison cell) with a dotted line and ‘X’ painted on the floor at the threshold. At each step, we are compelled to make choices about which spaces to engage and transgress. From the clues given, the viewer is made aware of the political dimension of the spatial jurisdictions to which Poitras wishes to draw attention. An example of this is the December 8, 2009 newspaper clipping with the story about how the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, Quebec, took down their barricade against RCMP and Quebec police for the Olympic Torch Relay. While reserve land for First Nations people in Canada is simultaneously a “cell” and sovereign territory, the fuzziness of this dual political jurisdictional system has incited conflict about space and rights.

The overlapping implied spatial jurisdictions within the installation are accompanied with elements that invite and repel viewers, forcing us to confront false dichotomies but to always choose. Perhaps the best example of this is within the small white room that we have to cross the dotted line to enter. Within this room is a television, some photos pinned to a wall, and two glass objects: an enclosed display case and a bowl. The enclosed display case contains curious artifacts that include a homemade WMD (weapon of mass destruction) and small seal pup that looks like it has been taxidermied, but is actually made of lard. The lard seal is displayed in the language of the museum; it is rarified and held away at a distance for venerable viewing. The easily overlooked glass bowl located across from the display case, however, contains pins that reference the Olympics and the Australian athlete Peter Norman who, on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics, controversially wore a pin to show solidarity with the Black Panthers. Mounted at hip-height, the glass bowl tempts us to take a pin as if it were a sweet from a candy jar. Our confrontation of the two glass objects that both repel and invite us gets recorded on a surveillance camera, thus adding another layer to the inscription of dislocations and divisions onto the space of the installation.

The politically charged, surreal investigation set up by Edward Poitras demands an active viewer who asks questions and is challenged to put the pieces together, exploring personal and public boundaries in the process. With the artist absent, the exhibition demands that our individual knowledge and perspective is brought to the act of looking, thus enriching the piece with the creation of links and narratives overlaid onto the enigmatic space. However, it would be misleading to say that Poitras engages our vision only; his work actively engages our bodies too. We are challenged to physically occupy the museum as we may have never before: making connections across time and scales and relating the inside of the museum to the outside and the outside to the inside until the distinction is no longer clear.

Mari Anna Fujita is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and is Principal of Fujitawork, a Vancouver-based design studio. Mari’s work is focused on the spatial and cultural effects of globalism. Her design studios and seminars explore emergent forms of urbanism, with a focus on Vancouver and other cities experiencing rapid growth.