Maya Watanabe: Liminal

Liminal is an audiovisual production based on an investigation into 6,000 non-exhumated mass graves and more than 16,000 missing persons, the result of the internal armed conflict in Peru. Today, nearly twenty years after the genocide officially ended, those people are still waiting to be recognised.

During an exhumation, the remains found enter into the limbo that exists between the status of "missing" and the forensic analysis that restores their identity, determines the legal death and finally grants the possibility of mourning. Liminal occupies that same state, on the threshold between the recognisable and the representable, between being a non-subject and being a recognised subject.

Grief is not only a personal experience of loss and pain. It is also a way of making the suffering of others political, and of recognising that the life and death of a person matter.

The video was produced with the support of Fundación Han Nefkens and Mondriaan Fonds and thanks to the cooperation of the Peruvian Ministry of Justice and Human Rights- Missing Persons Division and the Peruvian Public Ministry-Specialised Forensic Team.