Installation II | SanToriaBay

The starting points for SanToriaBay are both autobiographical and spiritual narratives of longing and loss, oriented along the seashore. My own journey of emigration and transformation echoes the relentless movement of tidal water and sand, always in flux, eternally ebbing and flowing in response to the pull of the moon. 

Having lived at the tip of Africa, the edge of Canada and the coast of California, I feel most at home next to large bodies of water. I associate very strongly with the mythical selkie (seal-woman) of my Irish heritage and often fantasize that my mother carried seawater in her womb. I find deep comfort in this liminal zone where, “ … the past is momentarily negated, suspended and the future has not yet begun, an instant of pure potentiality when everything, as it were, trembles in the balance. ” (Victor Turner, 1982)Wandering along the shore of SanToriaBay, part memory and part make-believe, I experience multiple realities. Sometimes the tide is out and I feel grounded and at peace as my feet sink into the endless, quiet, monochromatic sand. At other times I am feverish with worry, stranded between low and high tides, fearfully anticipating what is to come. When the tide is in, I experience tumultuous joy and giddy passion. I can almost feel invisible eddies of foam swirling between my toes.  However, the longing and loss return as the moon starts to pull the water away. I feel vulnerable and exposed, a crab on the shore without a shell, fearing a return to placeless-ness.

I am left to wonder, can my memories, make-believe and the threads that bind them, together deliver the liminal promise of SanToriaBay?  And what is the threshold I am trembling upon?