Ryann Liljenstolpe

A Disappearance

A Disappearance meditates on the violent disappearances of migrants crossing the southern border of the United States. Between 1994, the year that the border enforcement strategy “Prevention Through Deterrence” went into effect, and 2019, the United States Border Patrol reported over 7,000 deaths of migrants attempting to cross the border. However, this data only accounts for the remains that are recovered by border patrol once they are reported. Given that the vast majority of remains are scattered throughout the landscape by weather and scavenging animals, the true number of missing bodies is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Necroviolence is defined as violence performed through the treatment of corpses which is perceived as sacreligious, inhumane, or offensive by the perpetrator. or victim’s cultural or religious group. Such violence can be used to shock or horrify the living, but in the case of missing border crossers it also enables the powerful to deny responsibility for their deaths. A Disappearance represents what one such missing person might have packed to take with them across the desert. In the real world these metal and consumer plastic items may be the only remaining traces of a person once they disappear, but here their composition in unfired clay is equally vulnerable to weathering, decomposition, and eventually dispersal.

Stoneware clay, 2023