A mark of resistance and solidity, or a claustrophobic nightmare. A utility. A statement. An identity. Walls exclude as much as they protect. Both tangible and impalpable, a wall can be a stronghold; it is a canvas of experience and expression; a barricade that also holds doors, cracks and punctuations. One can climb over or dig under a wall, bringing it down to remove or reinstate its divisive value.

Foremost, a wall is positioned as a shelter and screening. We also ascribe social constructs to it, to reinforce othering. How is a wall put to work, garbed in the creative mien? This week we peruse an anthology of essays, 'Their Borders, Our World', opining on walls and borders as manifestations of spatial sumud in occupied Palestine. In its 20th year, the Edinburgh Art Festival tackles the question of

how to make art in global crises, by profiling artists pushing back against walls of corruption. Becoming a homey canvas for design artefacts, the walls of Apartment 50 in Marseille hold furniture by Marie & Alexandre, who curate a site-specific show by revisiting the lineage of French design and the legacy of Le Corbusier's uncompromising manifesto. Apart from emphasising Korean heritage, Nicolas Bourriaud, the artistic director of the 15th Gwangju Biennale, reflects on the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how we've again witnessed walls rising everywhere in the last decade.

We erect walls that hyphenate and bring coherence to spaces. Let them be pauses and not absolutes.