Neither Here Nor There: Through the Eyes of the Other
How being labelled “other” changes both self-perception and artistic vision.
This is part 4 of my 7-part essay series, Neither Here Nor There: Loneliness, Belonging & Othering. You can read the series introduction here.
In the last post, I wrote about loneliness as a creative landscape. But loneliness is not the only force at work when you grow up between worlds. There is also the gaze of others—the labels, the names, the small and large exclusions that remind you daily that you do not belong.
Over time, you begin to see yourself as others do—and more importantly, you begin to see how others see, period. The cultural theorist Edward Said described this process as 'othering'—a dynamic by which dominant cultures define those outside them as different, inferior, or exotic.⁴
For the artist who has lived as perpetual other, this gaze becomes both subject and method. It's not just about being seen as other, but learning to see from the position of otherness—a perspective that, while often painful, offers unique creative possibilities.
While Said applied the concept primarily to the colonial relationship between East and West, its implications extend into every corner of artistic practice: how we frame our subjects, whose stories we tell, what we consider worth capturing.
For Third Culture Kids who become artists, this gaze becomes familiar territory. We learn to read rooms quickly, to adapt, shape-shift, blend. We develop what might be called "anthropological instincts"—the ability to observe cultural codes from both inside and outside simultaneously. When I pick up a camera or sit down to write, I'm drawing on decades of practice reading between the lines of belonging.
In Aberdeenshire, the word sassenach was my first encounter with the power of a label.⁵ At nine, I didn't know the word and had no knowledge of the centuries of history bound up in it; I only heard the derogatory tone and felt its sting. The hurt of being called names, laughed at, kicked under the table—that was what dominated my world then. It's only now, decades later, that I can see how that early wound taught me something essential about how identity could be imposed from the outside, how a single word could carry entire histories of exclusion and resistance—and how those painful moments of othering would later become raw material for creative work.
It wasn't just in Scotland that I was made to feel other. Although there was no malice, my English cousins called my brother and me their "Scotch cousins," while my Scottish peers saw me as English. I felt neither—and said so to no one. But, subliminally, I began to collect these moments of misrecognition, to study how identity worked when viewed from different angles. These experiences, small on the surface, quietly became the foundation of my artistic practice: the understanding that meaning shifts depending on where you stand, that truth is always multiple, always in motion.
Maya Angelou captured this paradox beautifully: "When you realise you belong no place, you belong every place."⁶ TCKs who create often live in that contradiction—never quite at home, but never wholly excluded either. And in that liminal space, art becomes possible.
To live as “the other” is to see differently. It is painful, yes, but it can also sharpen perception, giving the artist a unique position from which to look outward. Have you ever felt labelled as “other”? How did that shape the way you see yourself—or the way you see the world? Next time, I’ll move from this gaze to the idea of identity as a mosaic—fragmented, yet full of possibility.
Next instalment: Identity as Mosaic.
⁴ Edward Said (1935–2003) was a Palestinian-American scholar and author of Orientalism, a landmark work that introduced the concept of "othering"—the process by which dominant cultures define those outside them as different, exotic, or inferior.
⁵ Derived from the Scottish Gaelic word Sasannach ("Saxon," i.e., "English person"), Sassenach is a term traditionally used in Scotland (and Ireland) to describe an English outsider, carrying historical overtones of cultural and political tension.
⁶ Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. The quote is from an interview in Oprah's Master Class (2011), where she spoke about finding internal freedom in the face of exclusion.