blurring boundaries, overlapping lives (1 November 2016)

Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.

- Edward Said

Lee Miller, Portrait of Space, 1936 near Siwa, Egypt

They continued for a long time to look on us women artists as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us any real professional status. Thirty years ago it wasn’t easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany.

- Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch, Mother (1925–6)

The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles.

- Edward Said

 Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, 2004

I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.

- Edward Said

 Lucy R. Lippard, On Kawara, "I Got Up, November 1, 1969," 1969


Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow.

― Edward Said, Orientalism

No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points ... It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about "us". But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how "our" culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).

- Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings. 

- Edward Said

Yuri Kozyrev - Witnessing the U.S. Invasion, the Rise of the Insurgency and the Fight Against ISIS, in Iraq, 2002-2016

I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.

- Hannah Höch