Swimmigration
Question, Investigate
This entry’s a bit of a strange one, to put it plainly. I’m writing an analysis on a poem, which itself was inspired by an art piece. But I suppose the natural thing to do when something’s strange is to ask questions about it. So I’ll pose mine: why did a work called Swimming Pool inspire a poem about immigration and a duality of worlds?
The best way to figure that out is to look at a short interview with the poet behind “Sans Papiers,” listed alongside the piece on MoMA (the museum where both pieces are on display)’s website. The poet, Lê Thị Diễm Thúy, explains that the idea of water makes her think of the seas that immigrants must cross to reach their destination. Thúy also mentions the idea of two worlds that the piece inspired in her.
Okay, that seems like a pretty straightforward answer. But even still, I’d like to elaborate on it with my own thoughts. Looking at the piece myself, I see fluid shapes in a chaotic, yet ordered pattern. And honestly, that sounds very close to what immigration is nowadays: fluid chaos with some semblance of order. Migrant camps such as the ones on the US’s southern border have become more common as the years slipped by, and this would provide the order I see. But the process of immigration is slippery and ever-changing, just like the waters of a swimming pool.
I don’t quite see the two worlds that Thúy describes in her interview, however. Perhaps that’s just my untrained eye for art, or maybe the fact that I haven’t seen the piece in person. That aside, the idea of immigrants leaving one world behind to enter another both makes sense and is rather illogical. Immigrants might be leaving one country for another, but it’s hard to leave behind a part of yourself. Even when assimilating to a new culture, immigrants still retain their own strong identities and backgrounds. I’d like to draw a further loose connection to the idea of a swimming pool; you will always be the same person you were entering and exiting a swimming pool, regardless of where you end up. Sure, things might change, and you’re likely to be disoriented from getting out of the pool at first, but you will not stop being yourself.