This year’s International Garden Festival theme provocatively examines boundaries — physical, psychological, and ecological — through four selected installations that each challenge conventional notions of space and ownership. Patrick Bérubé’s BACK / GROUND confronts the legacy of private property and human domination of ecosystems, reframing nature not as backdrop but as essential habitat. The interactive Peek-a-Boo by Hermine Demaël and Stephen Zimmerer reimagines borders as dynamic thresholds through movable steel grates that encourage visitor participation. Michael Hyttel Thorø’s Scars of Conflict poignantly translates the devastation of war into landscape form, while Simon Barrette’s You Shall (Not) Pass materializes invisible property lines through an imposing curtain of surveying markers.
Image Credit: Hermine Demaël/Stephen Zimmerer, Simon Barrette, Patrick Bérubé, Michael Hyttel Thorø
