Unsettled Boundaries

The state of liminality is a significant one, transitional in its structure, and one in which a vital activity takes place. Namely this activity is the moving between worlds, states, or perceptions, and the choice of new ones or of considering new potentialities. Essentially, this idea of being in limbo and the result of this state of ‘in-between ness’ is that we emerge from a relatively indeterminate, contemplative, and subjective space with an altered awareness.

This body of work focuses on a family who experiences an intense transitional phase physically and emotionally after moving to a fairly isolated location in the country from living in a city their whole lives. Exploring the relationship between their identities and the direct environment they lived in, I witnessed the boundaries they encountered which moved between familiarity and unfamiliarity, between alienation and integration and between the urban and the rural. The time I spend with the family turned out to be an intense transitional phase of them not only moving between two places but during which they sadly experienced a break up of their family.

This unsettling, disorientating time has emphasised this state of liminality even more, where one’s sense of identity and place dissolves to some extent bringing about disorientation opening ways to something new. I have approached their experience and their surroundings as a metaphor for this state of being, where something, somebody or somewhere is in a state of transition, in a passage between two worlds.

“ In the middle of the whirlwind, after all, is where we often here the still voice”

(Susan Palwick)