We construct and reconstruct boundaries in order to protect ourselves, to relate to others, to move into and through the world, and for the world to move around and through us. We are, ourselves, volumes of porous boundaries.

Boundaries are necessary and real: strong and protective, hard-edged and cutting, blurry and binding; breachable, fallible; soft, malleable, and breathing; a conduit. To be a porous boundary means that we exist as all of these things, always individually, and often inextricably linked to each other. In her essay Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water, Astrida Neimanis posits that “As watery, we experience ourselves less as isolated entities, and more as oceanic eddies: I am a singular, dynamic whorl dissolving in a complex, fluid circulation.”

There is pleasure and joy in porosity, in connection; there can be deep discomfort when we lose sight of ourselves, of each other, or when there is a loss so great that grief obliterates (or, perhaps, vastly expands) our boundaries; and there is generative possibility in separation, in the common human experience of loneliness.

What does care look like in the context of this viscous porosity? How do we care for ourselves, for those in our immediate orbit, for strangers? How and when might we choose to hold strangers closely? What amount of fierceness or tenderness is necessary? What seeps through?

On Being a Porous Boundary features immersive paintings, bodily ceramic sculpture, and monumental paper sculpture by Catherine Fairbanks, and intimate poetry by Catherine Barnett, which has been hand-drawn for the exhibition by Nuria Kiesebrink-Pareick.

The exhibition also includes a reading room with a selection of books and resources—curated by Lewis & Clark faculty and staff Daena Goldsmith, Alexis Rehrmann, Kabir Heimsath, Reiko Hillyer, Erica Jensen, and Mary Szybist—that relate to boundaries as seen through the lenses of Narrative Medicine, Anthropology, History, Art, and Literature. The space is intended for classes and the public to gather, ponder, and converse.