Liminal Spaces
Early last year, the planes disappeared from our skies. The streets emptied. The space between others widened. The edges of reality blurred. The fabric of life, swiftly unravelling before our eyes.
Neither here nor there, suspended in an indefinite state of liminality. An acute awareness that we could never go back to what once was, coupled with a deep uncertainty for the future.
On the precipice, the threshold. In the twilight zone.
A liminal space, which can be both figurative and literal, functions as a cocoon, a preparatory stage, a metamorphosis. It’s as if the threads of the past and future are stitching themselves together. Often we feel unsettled, disoriented, and fearful as we are yet to realise the transformation that is taking place.
Some liminal experiences are more distinct than others – a pregnant woman on the brink of motherhood, graduation, a flight. The beginning and end is clear – the plane takes off, the plane lands. The in-between is where the magic exists.
So how does one navigate a liminal state in which the way out is unforeseeable, like the one we find ourselves in now?
Look to the sky.
The ultimate liminal space, colours bleed into the next, a constant shifting of time and light. Dark, empty space illuminated by the sun. As Maggie Nelson puts it, the blue of the sky is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire. Dusk and dawn, when the world is betwixt and between, offers a road back into the cave of our inner selves. The unfolding landscape, yet to be defined by the rays and reflections of the sun, lends itself to a certain malleability. The future, pregnant with possibility; the world belongs to you.
BIOGRAPHY
Tanya Wales is an Australian abstract artist, based in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. Following professional education in Design Arts and Graphic Design between 1994 and 1997, Tanya began to develop her creative thinking in more abstract forms of expression. This included a period of training at the National Art School in 2007 and private tutoring with the acclaimed Sydney artist, Marissa Purcell between 2008 and 2014. During this time, Tanya developed several bodies of work and exhibited at various group and solo shows in Sydney and Melbourne, including seven exhibitions at The Other Art Fairs. She continues to demonstrate the evolution of her work in exhibitions and galleries.
