Journey of an Idea

A selection of essays by the British-Pakistani artist, curator, and essayist Rasheed Araeen, dedicated to the fight for a place in history and society as seen from the perspective of a “third world” individual.

Rasheed Araeen’s struggle over many years for justice—using both artistic mediums in the form of universal geometric abstractions, and political ones, via essays, performances, and exhibition projects exposing racism—earned him the exceptional position of an unquestioned authority in the world of art. Araeen’s articles revealing his political affiliations are reflections on Western art’s interconnection with colonial egoism, as well as descriptions of the new art’s utopian projects available to all viewers, regardless of their skin color and place of birth. Araeen’s essays set an example of a completely idiosyncratic reading and experience of “borderline thinking”, where the artist’s creative bio, the most common questions of identity politics, and the search of aesthetic strategies transgressing the borders, both political and cultural, intertwine.