Un tapis frontière : Baltensperger + Siepert, Ways to Escape One’s Former Country / Patterns & Traces, 2017

All objects are, by nature, mobile, but some are even more so than others because their long migrations push them towards new forms, give them a different status or involve sometimes unexpected uses. This is the case with “border objects”, objects produced in Europe from extra-European artificialia or naturalia. In order to shed light on how, in Western Europe, the new status and new formal, utilitarian boundaries of objects from elsewhere are formed, we shall focus on the work produced by the artist duo Baltensperger + Siepert, in collaboration with exiles, on the project “Ways to Escape One’s Former Country / Patterns & Traces” (2017). The definitive transformation undergone by an old Oriental rug, taking the form of a knotted black band which follows the meandering road into exile of people and objects, completely modifies the perception of that oriental artefact. From a luxury item enriching a European interior, the rug becomes a work of art which makes us reflect on currents of migration. The similarity of the trajectories of objects and of people in fact produces, in such cases, something peculiarly pertinent to the notion of biography of objects. Both a product of migration and a means of perceiving it, the role of art can, in turn, also be clarified.