The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

Suchan Kinoshita

(c)image: M HKA
Uitzicht [View of the Outside], 2002
Installation , variable dimensions
carpet, chairs

Uitzicht [View of the Outside] consists of a piece of red carpet and two chairs. They are installed at the edge of a museum space, in front of a window, with a view unto the outside. The elements appear to have been taken straight out of a living room. When we sit down on the chairs we turn our backs to what is happening in the museum. At the same time we become very aware of being in a museum, precisely because we are looking at the world outside the museum. The museum window becomes the ‘window to the world’, a literal translation of how a painting used to be regarded. Moreover, as we sit on the chairs we become part of a work of art. We are in a complex situation: inside the museum but also turning against it; part of the audience but also of the exhibition. Uitzicht [View of the Outside] plays with the relation between seeing and being seen. Kinoshita often uses marginal spaces and zones of transition for her installations, to question artificial institutional boundaries that inhibit cross-overs and interactions with other areas of art and society.