ESSAY text by DONATIEN GRAU artwork by KATERINA JEBB donatien grau is a french writer, an art critic, a curator at the musée d’orsay in paris, and a long-time contributor to purple. Islands are everywhere in contemporary thought. Or, at least, they represent a functioning pattern through which to consider the ways we live in the world. Christodoulos Panayiotou’s utopian art space in Limassol, Cyprus, is named “The Island Club.” Édouard Glissant, the leading thinker and author from Martinique, made the word “archipelago” into a concept, considering that we were to live not as islands, nor as part of the continents, but as ensembles of connected islands, existing together, each in its own individuality but united by a web of visibilities. The very notion of “creolization” — as coined by Glissant, as well — signifies a process of permanently shifting, blending identity, outside of the domination of the continent and…