Liminal Beach - solo exhibition at Wentrup Gallery, Berlin, 15 September - 21 November 2023

A woman flings herself into the air on a secluded beach, her red dress lifting from the force of that leap, its

color a vibrant splash against the blue sky and endless horizon. She is so exuberant that she seems to defy

gravity. Any moment now, those graceful arms might carry her away beyond where we can see. Phoebe

Boswell’s

Liminal Deity could be a portrait of joy and exhilarating freedom. But that dress: it is both elegant

and harrowing, made of either feathers or flesh. Its shade of red hovers on the edge of darkness. Those

could be feathers whipping in the wind. It could also be tender flesh, disintegrating. It is flight in motion. It is

a wound exposed. The shadow that seems to dance in front of this woman, could it be trying to flee? So much

in this work is a suggestion: is this joy, or is this pain? It is impossible to know from her expression, the face

is rendered featureless.

Liminal Deity, like all of Phoebe Boswell’s art, dares us to give up our certainties. It

challenges us to travel across uncharted territory, not for the sake of safety, but for a more complicated and

layered understanding of all that can exist at once. In that space, Boswell asserts, lives possibility and even

freedom.

This work is part of Phoebe Boswell’s exhibition, “Liminal Beach”, at Berlin’s Wentrup Gallery. In these

portraits of fishermen and other residents of a coastline that echoes the shores of East Africa, the ocean is a

moody and powerful presence, less a backdrop to life than a steady companion. It beckons as one solitary

woman stares into the horizon in

To Know the Weather. It is stark and foreboding as a group gathers their

nets in

Bless the Boats. The ocean gleams, crystalline and inviting, as two men talk in

All Possible

Everything. It seems to rise and embrace the young men in

Future Ancestors. The ocean: eternal and

mercurial, sheltering and threatening.

A hint of its power is made evident in the curation of “Liminal Beach”, where a shimmering, silvery reflective

wall covering both mirrors the paintings back to the viewer and places us firmly within the line of sight. We

are seeing. We are the seen. The lines between observer and subject, between the ocean and the city,

between mirage and reality, blur. The horizon expands, endlessly. In this new series of bold, sensitive

paintings – seen for the first time in Berlin -- Boswell continues to push us further into that unstable,

uncomfortable terrain where real change and inspiration reside.

Phoebe Boswell is an interdisciplinary artist with breathtaking range and talent. Her art moves fluidly across

several mediums - drawing, video, animation, sound, interactivity, performance, writing, and painting – all of

it in the service of questions about who we are and how we see/are seen, about what we embody physically

and what we contain within us in that invisible territory of the imagination, the voice, and the spirit. Born in

Nairobi, Kenya and raised in the Arabian Gulf, Phoebe now lives in the UK and spends time in her family

home in Zanzibar. It is a diasporic existence, consisting of many worlds and languages, the landscapes of her

childhood separated by bodies of water which have witnessed migrations and homecomings, becoming both

graveyards and paths towards a new life. Her work springs from that tension, inspired by bodies bound by

flesh and bone, and those made of water.

Text by Maaza Mengiste

Phoebe BoswellSeptember 12, 2023