The Exhibition as Rite de Passage: A Spatial and Experiential Framework

In ‘Rites de Passage’, anthropologist Arnold van Gennep outlines a three-part structure for transitional rituals: separation, liminality, and incorporation. The transitional ritual from childhood to adolescence is a classical example: separation from peers, a liminal phase in which the individual belongs neither to the group of children nor to adults, and eventual incorporation into adult society.

An exhibition visit follows a comparable dramaturgy. There is a physical separation from the everyday world, a liminal experience in the white cube, and finally a return to the world —transformed by the encounter with art.

The museum provides an artistic and curatorial framework for this second, liminal phase. Entry and exit, however, are treated as neutral, purely functional transitions. Yet these thresholds hold potential: they mark the precise point where the museum and the world could intersect! I propose to treat these two transitions —entry and exit— as essential elements of the exhibition experience, through the creation of two antechambers: one preceding and one following the white cube.

Three Acts of Passage
First Antechamber: Separation
What could separate us from the world? It is the confrontation with that which transcends us. This capacity defines our humanity and distinguishes us from animals, angels, monsters, and gods.The first antechamber is an ode to the transcendent. It offers, quite literally, a view into space—beyond the roof of the museum.

White Cube: Liminal State.
The second space is a passage through confusion, derealisation, and an altered state of consciousness (psyche-osis). It reflects the psychological condition shaped by the disorientation that follows an encounter with the radically other. This is the symbolic cave, where the viewer’s identity is suspended—between imagination, hallucination, and reality. Perception is distorted; identity becomes fluid.

Last Antechamber: Incorporation
The last space is the overcoming of separation and confusion. It marks a return to the world. In this return, we do not seek the comfort of what is known, but engage with the other —with what is unfamiliar— equipped with new tools and the courage to face it. 

The outside world is essential for art. I try to make art for everyone—not to improve people, but to improve art. By confronting art with what it is not —other discourses, other needs, other values— it is made stronger. Before art can be created, space must be cleared —space in which something artistic might occur. In this act of clearing space, art finds its force and its depth.

The antechambers are such spaces: sites of confrontation between the world and art, between art and the radically other. They represent a commitment to an expanded model of aesthetic experience —one that acknowledges the necessity of departure, the risk of transformation, and the courage of return.