We differentiate between the internal and external in many different situations. Our interior is formed on the basis of common rules such as language, physical characteristics and memory, and friction and discord frequently arise between inside and out. Yet we find new rules for the internal and external, negotiating on the boundaries, which are continually being updated. Thus we could describe a border as a territory harboring the potential to expand the interior.
This year's Collection Exhibition is an attempt from this standpoint to change our view of borderlines from one of division, to one of connection and expansion. "Borderline Collection Exhibition I" took as its basis that which is most familiar to us – the body – and pondered the relationship between inside and out.
"Borderline Collection Exhibition II" expands this to include social borders, in a showcase of works from the Museum’s collection. Having come to possess through the evolutionary process a massive cerebrum, homo sapiens also acquired the inner realm that is consciousness. Various borderlines exist in our society: between the self and others, national borders, and gender, to name just a few, but in most cases no actual line has been drawn. Rather a line has been drawn by people in their consciousness, and subsequently become institutionalized. Through the work of eight artists, at times confronting the borderlines created by human consciousness, at times traversing them, this exhibition explores the potential for people to expand the inner realm that is the self through contact with the outside, via borders.

*image (left)
Untitled (Rapture series), 1999
© Shirin NESHAT
collection: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa