“Otherisation is unavoidable, and for every One, the Other is the Heart of Darkness. The West is as much the Heart of Darkness to the Rest as the latter is to the West. Invention and contemplation of the Other is a continuous process evident in all cultures and societies. But in contemplating the Other, it is necessary to exhibit modesty and admit relative handicap since the peripheral location of the contemplator precludes a complete understanding. This ineluctability is the Darkness.”
-from Olu Oguibe, In the “Heart of Darkness” (4).

Living in the southwest of México, I, the immigrant, become other in a sea of what, to me, is an otherness that ‘precludes a complete understanding.’ Since emigrating to Oaxaca in 2007, I have been negotiating the experience of other and otherness within my own heart, in the art I make, and the art I live. What follows on subsequent pages is a glimpse into that work.

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Christopher Huck received a PhD from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) in 2021, with a focus on (Continental) philosophy, art theory, and aesthetics; a MFA from Transart Institute for Creative Research at Plymouth University (Plymouth, England) in 2014; and studied however briefly at the (late) San Francisco Art Institute; the Minneapolis College of Art + Design; the University of Colorado; and the Nova Scotia College of Art + Design (NSCAD).

What is the Sublime? …Ecologies of Emptiness, Aesthetics, and the Visual Arts will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in February 2027.