Winston’s Hiccup or Churchill’s Sneeze is an apocryphal story about how Churchill drew the zigzag border of Trans-Jordan after a hefty lunch on a piece of napkin.

(dis)Orientalism assumes the arbitrary borders and the territorialization drawn up by western colonialism on the ‘Arab’ region as its starting point. It then deforms and inflates these lines, constructing planes and spaces of continuity and exchange from corner to corner. 

Like a miniature painting found in old cartographic manuscripts, (dis)Orientalism has an indivisible whole (in terms of colors and composition  that offers a matrix of interior spatial organizations rich with overlaps, permeability and connectivity. 

A demystified representation of the Arab world, it stands as a dynamic, evolving whole, containing vast diversities but still potentially cohesive and solid.