Rasheed Araeen

Rasheed Araeen (; born 15 June 1935) is a Karachi-born, London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, and curator. He graduated in civil engineering from the NED University of Engineering and Technology in 1962, and has been working as a visual artist bridging life, art and activism since his arrival in London from Pakistan in 1964.

Art career

Araeen was pursuing a career as an engineer in Karachi when he was first exposed to avant-garde art. This arrived through two channels: imported Western books and magazines and contact with Pakistani contemporary artists. Consequently, he decided to pursue art-making and embarked on a second career.

Upon arriving in London in 1964, Araeen began working as an artist without any formal training, producing sculptures influenced by Minimalism and the work of Anthony Caro alongside his engineering experience. By his own account, works created or imagined in this period such as ''Chakras'' (1969–1970) and ''Zero to Infinity'' (1968–2004), while using basic structural units such as cubes, lattice and discs, were process-based and open to transformation by "the creative energy of the collective". Concepts of this period would make ripple effects throughout his career, both formally and politically. Chakras, the 16 red painted circular discs released on the water from Saint Katherine's Dock in 1970, would later evolve and give rise to the concept of ''Disco Sailing'' (1970–74), a new form between floating sculpture and dance. The work was revisited and resurrected many times through the decades and performed most recently at Garage Museum in Moscow in 2019.

Starting from the 1970s Araeen was increasingly concerned with questions of postcolonialism as he struggled with the Eurocentrism of institutions. Centering around issues of identity, representation and racial violence, he created the performance ''Paki Bastard, Portrait of The Artist as a Black Person'' (1977) using video projection, live performance and sound. He complemented this with writing statements and manifestos, which he considered to be a "textual form of art".

He also often traveled back to Karachi and make frequent visits to Baluchistan as a "return to the source". These travels have prompted in interest around land art and environmental issues described as "Ecoaesthetics" in his 2010 publication ''Art Beyond Art''.

Araeen participated in Les Magiciens de la Terre (1989); 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997), 11th Biennale of Sydney (1998), 9th Shanghai Biennale (212), 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and documenta 14 (2017). In December 2017 a major retrospective of Araeen's work which spotted 60 years of his work was presented at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and then toured to MAMCO in Geneva, the BALTIC in Gateshead, and Garage Museum in Moscow.

Publishing

Araeen's artistic activity has been complemented by writing and publishing. He founded and began editing the journal ''Black Phoenix'' in 1978'','' which came to an abrupt end after three issues. In 1987 he founded the groundbreaking journal '' Third Text. Third World Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture,'' dealing with art, the Third World, Postcolonialism and ethnicity. In the first decade of its publication, the main aim was to reveal "the institutional closures of the art world and the artists they included, the second began the inquiry into the emergent phenomenon first signaled by the notorious show ''Magiciens de la terre'' of the assimilation of the exotic other into the new world art," as Sean Cubitt summarized the goals in the ''Third Text Reader'' in 2002. In 1999 Araeen spoke about his own journal ''Third Text'' as an attempt to "demolish the boundaries that separate art and art criticism".

Some of Araeen's contributions to ''Third Text'' were "From Primitivism to Ethnic Arts / & / Why Third Text?", ''Third Text'' #1, Autumn 1987; "Our Bauhaus Others' Mudhouse" he ''Magiciens de la terre'' issue ''Third Text'' #6, Spring 1989 and "Modernity, Modernism and Africa's Authentic Voice", ''Third Text'' Vol 24 #2, 2010.

Araeen founded ''Third Text Asia'' in 2008. The journal published three issues before ceasing activity.

Activism and institutional critique

Araeen from the early 1970s was among the first cultural practitioners to voice the need for artists of African, Latin American, and Asian origins to be represented in British cultural institutions. He curated exhibitions; initiated and published several journals; and produced art installations and community-based artistic projects.

Before founding the journal Black Phoenix in 1972, he joined the Black Panther Movement and then wrote "Preliminary Notes For A Black Manifesto" in 1975–76. He established a black voice as a publisher, writer, and artist in the British arts. In 1988 he curated the exhibition '' The Essential Black Art''. This provided a foretaste of '' The Other Story'', a larger 1989 exhibition featuring artists including Araeen himself, Frank Bowling, Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Uzo Egonu, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid

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