In ‘Where I Be Is with the Image’ (Canadian Art, Summer 2018), Nasrin Himada talks about her interest “in thinking with images as a way out of the limits of language.” While the focus of the article is on the experience of exile, I find what Himada has to say about images resonant and worth thinking about more broadly. Himada also quotes a 2014 interview with Etel Adnan by Lisa Robertson in BOMB Magazine. Both articles are good reads, here are some ideas that especially resonated with me:
“Images are not still. They are moving things. They come, they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even visual—ultimately, they are pure feeling. They’re like something that calls you through a fog or a cloud.” Etal Adnan
“If images are calling us through a fog or a cloud, it’s because at times they get at the limit of something before we can even speak it or write it. Instead they allow us to feel it.” Nasrin Himada
“Light is an extraordinary element. It’s a being on its own, it’s something you look at, and that also you inhabit.” Etal Adnan
“Art is not separate or alienated from how we live through the day—rather, it saturates the experience of what makes the day a day.” Nasrin Himada