Liminal Land (Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen) shows the brand new depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam NL) just before the art collection will be moved there. Satijn Panyigay photographed the bowl-shaped building, covered in mirrors from the outside, in the brief moment of emptiness just after completion, raw and industrial inside, waiting for its function. The world's first open to the public depot, will be home to 151,000 works of art.
The concrete rooms are closed off by heavy, electric sliding doors. Photographing there reminded Panyigay of the board game Labyrinth, an 'enchanted maze' in which players can find treasures and thwart others in their quest by sliding walls. A specific steel rack she wanted to photograph seemed to have disappeared and was only found after 1.5 hours of searching, as if the building had taken the treasure back. Ironically you could say the real 'treasures' are missing, but for Panyigay it's the lack of them, and the artworks would only disturb her connection to the building's essence.
The title refers to the aesthetics of 'Liminal Spaces', places that form a transition between two locations. 'No man's lands', which you normally walk through thoughtlessly, are celebrated here. Recognizable but also alienating and eerie when empty.
In a spiritual form liminality is a time of transformation, between two states of being.
Satijn Panyigay portrays a place that will soon be transformed from an empty building into an icon, unique in form and function. But now in all its nakedness, the building's stillness is what captures her.
The series forms a diptych with 'Twilight Zone (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) in which Panyigay photographed the museum itself, just after its closure, waiting for a large-scale renovation. The reverse story of Liminal Land (Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen), but both in states of tranquility. One, perhaps tired, resting. The other anxiously waiting, or enjoying a last moment of calm before the storm.