Can critical thinking spring from both a fortune cookie and Jacques Lacan's most obscure seminar footnote? Estelle Hoy says yes. In her book sake blue, the Berlin-based writer and academic takes overpriced cheesecakes in that city as the starting point for an essay on art writing; shoplifting in Berlin opens to a reflection on the economies of activist practices; fiction allows us to discuss the legacy of institutional critique, queer melanges, or quiet melancholy. 

To Hoy, the story of art becomes more nuanced in light of lyrics by Arthur Russell, the posthumous sorrow of Sylvia Plath, or a poem by Yvonne Rainer. sake blue gathers critical essays, art reviews and poetic fiction. Written in dialogue with the work of Martine Syms, Marlene Dumas, Herve Guibert, or Camille Henrot, these texts combine the subjective and analytic, addressing power relations and the force of affect. Hoy spares nothing in exposing cultural cliches and urgent political issues through fast-paced acerbity. She advocates the work of women artists, mocks stereotypes, questions myths, and champions desire, sadness and boredom.

Simultaneously beautiful, lyrical and cutthroat, her writing echoes to the reader like l'esprit d'escalier – 'we think of the perfect reply just a little too late.'

After 8 Books, 216pp, 12cm x 18cm, paperback, 2024