The Space in Which We Travel, 2019

In The Space in Which We Travel Calida Rawles depicts two adolescent girls in white dresses who are submerged underwater, grasping each other’s hands; their bodies create a double helix, suggesting their genealogical linkage. Rawles reflects that water can be turbulent and terrifying but also enveloping and elevating: it is “duplicitous…a very dangerous element,” she says. “In order to survive in water, you have to relax. If you struggle, you sink. You take the waves as they come. I think of that as just a state of being.”