There is an inherent violence to a border. Sometimes this violence is overt. Other times it’s invisible or hard to define; a violence in the negative. Most of the time both are present, to varying degrees. Which form(s) the violence takes has a lot to do with the nature of the border in question.

Hard borders, like those which exist between warring nations, tectonic plates, or the soft flesh of the interior and the harshness of the outside world, will often exemplify bold, dramatic forms of obvious violence. Gunned down refugees, towering mountain ranges, or gushing stab wounds.

Soft borders, like those between intersecting communities, land and sea, or flesh and bone, often manifest more subtle forms of harm. So subtle, in fact, that it is no longer seen. Internalized aggressions, the breaking down of firm stone into shifting sand, or the tiny and incremental wearing down of aging joints.

The works of Julie Maurin, at least those shared on this site under our recent theme on the Necropastoral, are an excellent showcase of these different manifestations of bordered violence. A mix of rectilinear wall pieces and expansive floor pieces, of hard synthetics and pliable organics, and receding landscapes and emergent sculptural forms. Within and between these we can clearly see the violence of the border-point, both when those borders are operating as intended, and when they start to come apart.

Bones jut, resins swallow, snaking flesh worms free, and insides spill out dramatically into outsides. In between these flamboyant examples we see softer, more insidious violences. Organic forms become locked in place, and subjected to a stillness which is against their nature. Edge points fold back in on themselves, molded into clean lines and squared off edges. Loose collections spread and flow from side to side, but are rigidly bounded off by the planes of floors and walls, and the ever-present pull of gravity. The violences of constraint.

In many of these cases, the borders in question are so ubiquitous, so expected and codified and seemingly natural, that they don’t read as borders at all. And the violences which intersect and stratify them are not cleanly delineated either, creating constant tensions between the borders we recognize and the borders we don’t.

Fittingly, the outcome of all of this violence is ambiguous, (or perhaps ambivalent) representing both the creation of the new and the destruction of the old. Newborn, highly animated figures emerge from rigid, unyielding matter. Compositions flow both within and between wall and floor and open space. For every invention, a dissolution. Possibly many dissolutions.

And Maurin’s charming, engaging forms, the emerging figures within their work, certainly make all of this turmoil seem worthwhile. Lupine monstrosities and subverted pastoral scenes, bright in both colour and texture. But there are costs.

In keeping with the Necropastoral, we can see within Maurin’s work the emergence of the new natural, the post and trans and extra-human growth of the viral and the cancerous and the alien. Forms and systems with their own distinct logics and biologies, which question or merely step over the rigid systems of classification to which the genuinely natural has long been subjected. They move away from the human in ways which, ultimately, serve us all, despite the violence and pain and discomfort through which they manifest. A new nature, emerging on the far shore of the one we’ve already destroyed.

These works also serve as a fittingly grotesque and disjointed reminder of the violence of borders. Of how that violence can manifest when it isn’t the new natural which is being served, but the merely human. The intersecting, often invisible (or intentionally obscured) harm that is done when borders become misaligned, when some are recognized and some are not. When soft borders become weaponized along with hard ones.

This violence can, under the right circumstances, and with the right underlying impetus, lead through pain and dissolution into new and better things. But it can also, very easily, become malignant, and ugly. Which borders we choose or fail to recognize, which are allowed to grow and become soft at their edges or be violently reinforced or erased, represents a profound moral and ideological challenge on the part of humanity.

Perhaps one day the growth of the new natural, of the kind seen in Maurin’s work, will wash away the borders we have erected or failed to honour. Until then, all that remains is the violence.