Was I Ever Really Here?

I got too comfortable with the mirror, with the black and white. My altar, my peace of mind. Just my self. A space to realign, re-identify, discard all the labels and epithets carved into my skin, but sometimes it can be difficult to ameliorate those sorts of wounds.

My own friends called me a nigger. The others said I spoke too white. I was told they’re all wrong, but what if they’re both right? Someone has to be right eventually.

Had a dream that I was floating in the ocean once–a castaway.

One day I found the mirror broken into pieces. As I gazed upon those shards, a thousand different versions of myself gazed right back at me. Some versions were familiar and others alien. Some were known truths and others unknown to me.

In the dream, I attempted to look for the shoreline in a panic–for any place to ground my self. I’m terrified of the water. There’s no permanence, but an ever-shifting mold. There’s no place to fit securely. I’m neither here nor there.

And so I often ask, was I ever really here?—K

The concept of the “Other” represents the opposite of what’s considered normal or standard. It creates a clear divide between “us” and “them,” hinting at superiority and inferiority by inclusion and exclusion. However, this division does not always hold up. Trying to categorize people into rigid groups becomes more complicated in today’s world, where globalization leads to constant cultural mixing–both physically and virtually. As we inhabit one another’s spaces, the process of othering becomes malleable and the boundaries permeable.

Othering has a colonial history. It is evident in dichotomies such as the “civilized” and the “savage.” Colonial ideologies never disappeared; they only transformed. These modes of thinking persist in the way society and politics divide people based on race, gender, class, and nationality. As Edward Said explained in Orientalism, creating the idea of the “Other” has always served as a tool to justify control and exploitation. The concept of the Other is invented to serve a purpose but never an inherent truth. Labeling others as different often provides a sense of security or superiority, reinforcing an “us versus them.” When someone is constantly treated as the Other, they may feel isolated, unseen, and unsure of their own worth. This process not only takes away their sense of individuality but also makes them feel as though they don't belong. The psychological impact of Othering is profound and affects everyone involved. What and who counts as “us” or “them” can shift based on power, context, or even the stories people tell.

Othering serves multiple purposes, but it’s never set in stone.

Rowan Renee’s work is deeply personal, rooted in their belief that the prison system fails to address the root causes of harm and foster real change. This perspective stems from Renee’s own experience: their father was imprisoned for sexually abusing them and other children, yet the system provided no real resolution or healing for those affected. Instead, Renee advocates for transformative justice, a system that focuses on healing, accountability, and addressing trauma over punishment.

In No Spirit for Me (2019), Renee uses their father’s criminal case file, including court records, witness statements, and police evidence, to expose the failures of the justice system. The work raises difficult questions: Who is truly causing harm? Is it just the abuser, or is the state, with its punitive systems, also part of the problem? Renee challenges us to rethink what justice means and who it serves by juxtaposing personal and systemic violence. Renee’s work also confronts the silence around incest and familial abuse, topics often overshadowed by narratives like “stranger danger.” Through their art, Renee seeks a deeper form of justice—one that acknowledges trauma’s complexity and prioritizes healing over punishment. Rather than offering easy answers, their work invites us to sit with these complexities. It underscores how systems of power create divisions, dehumanizing those labeled as Other. Yet, it also points to the possibility of breaking down these barriers, urging us to rethink how we address harm and relate to one another. Through their work, Renee transforms personal pain into a powerful call for change, challenging us to imagine alternatives to punitive systems, ones that focus on healing and accountability instead.

The everything bagel becomes the central focus of Othering in Ari Temkin’s video work of the same name, Everything Bagel (2024). The bagel is a symbol of the Jewish diaspora–it exists as a loophole as Jews were forbidden to bake. By boiling the bread first, they were able to legally circumvent this restriction. At first glance, Temkin’s work appears to be a parody. Those unfamiliar with his approach may even take offense. However, his intent becomes clear through the barrage of symbolism in the film. As a Uruguayan Jew, Temkin has witnessed firsthand the internal schisms of the Jewish diaspora. He frequently asks, what is a Jew?, and he uses AI tools to generate stereotypical representations of Jewish identity. These AI-produced figures, which prominently feature in his work, fight and dance in an exaggerated, humorous manner. In the context of the escalating Israel-Palestine conflict, the internal tensions in Jewish communities have never been more relevant. The question “What is a Jew?” expands beyond stereotypes into broader political and ideological questions.

Hinda Weiss creates a surreal universe in a small desert town where wild landscapes and old military bases coexist in After the Desert Goat (2018). A group of people swings together, maintaining a careful distance. The swings simultaneously serve as both a safe zone, where they can avoid direct contact and remain apart, and a hopeful means of connection. Out of the eight swings, two remain empty, as if awaiting new arrivals—or perhaps abandoned by those who have felt displaced from society. This scene gradually contrasts with the world of the goats, who fight and live together without barriers. A girl, who seems to belong to the swing group, approaches the goats but ultimately runs away from them. Amid such palpable separation, where can she belong?

Jared Owens populates his canvases densely with human figures, using the very edges of the canvas as a boundary to underscore the structural confinement of bodies within an organised system. This overcrowding functions as an exercise in visual compression, acting as a symbol for repression. In his Untitled series, such confinement explicitly connects to Owens’s own experience of incarceration, yet also serves as an implicit commentary on the social and political forces that restrict individual agency. By crowding the canvas with figures, Owens compels us to question who controls and who follows, and whether we are conscious of these dynamics—or our complicity in them.

Yujie Zhou’s artwork Us and Them (2023) challenges the idea of “us versus them,” which is a way of thinking that fuels Othering, by dividing people into two distinct groups. Reimagining Susan Sontag’s essay “The Image-World” (1977), Zhou highlights how language reinforces divisions by labeling groups as “us” and “them.” By changing pronouns and shifting perspectives, Zhou breaks down the rigid categories of identity and belonging, revealing their socially constructed and fluid nature.

The fragile nature of the Other comes into play with Sheila Carr’s Meet Me in the Middle (2024). The sculpture makes use of found objects, primarily industrial, to create a massive monument that seems at any moment to collapse upon the viewer. The central focus of the piece is electrical cables interwoven around a large spool. The wires, black and white, relate to the artist’s tension around their biracial identity—a tension that reverberates throughout the entire piece.

The shattered mirror, the fragmented narratives, and symbolic bagel all serve as metaphors for the multiplicity of identity and the permeability of boundaries. They challenge us to question the binaries of “us” and “them,” to recognize the ways in which we are all complicit in the process of Othering, and to imagine new ways of belonging that embrace difference rather than fear it.

As we navigate ever-shifting identities, we ask ourselves: “Was I ever really here?” And in posing this question, we begin to see that the answer lies not in fixed categories, but in the fluid, interconnected spaces between them.