From Tuesday’s discussion and this week’s readings, I was surprised by the connections I could make between symbols of artwork and concepts in cultural anthropology related to liminality and rites of passage. While I have studied rites of passage and liminality in the context of religious and social rituals, this week’s readings have given me a more artistic perspective on the ambiguities fostered by the dangerous, uncertain transition between countries and the desire to leave behind a difficult past for a promising future.

Similar to the photo of Aylan Kurdi, Larsen’s End of Dreams, for example, provided a tremendous insight into the “liminal space” of a migrant’s voyage. This work of art depicts human shaped figures submerged in the Tyrrhenian Sea “to symbolize the thousands of unidentified dead bodies washing up on Italy’s shore” (Welch 2016).

One aspect of this piece that really resonated with me was submersion of these figures in the sea, which is often a symbol of exploration and the unknown—the liminality of the sea can be directly associated with the liminality of these migrants’ identities as they submerge themselves in this difficult journey between their pasts and futures. I think the structure that these figures are attached to symbolize the identities and desires that these migrants had during their journey.

The unexpected storm and dismantling of these memorialized figures could be interpreted as the detachment from hope and identity that many migrants may have experienced, whether or not their journey met a successful ending. Alternatively, this could be thought of as a postliminal state where migrants ultimately meet dark endings and complete loss of identity after going through the stages of separation and liminality.

The complex postliminal state Bambino had entered after all of his struggles and training during his passage was emotional and upsetting to read about. It was heartbreaking and felt unfair to learn that the fate of this hopeful, jovial boy who survived the crossing was to be trapped “undocumented migrant” in land that provided so much more potential. Overall, I found these readings very insightful and have realized the both investigative journalism and art are so crucial for us to understand the ambiguity faced by migrants.