GATESHEAD.- BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art is presenting the first comprehensive survey of Rasheed Araeen’s (b. 1935, Karachi) wide-ranging artistic and academic practice, in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum. Spanning 60 years, the retrospective encompasses Araeen’s art, writing, editing and curating, displaying a body of work that has had profound influence on generations of artists, writers and thinkers. Having premiered at Van Abbemuseum in December 2017, BALTIC is hosting the only UK iteration of Rasheed Araeen: A Retrospective, until 27 January 2019.
Araeen is a leading voice on the subject of Eurocentrism within the British art establishment. In 1972, Araeen joined the Black Panther Movement and was subsequently the founding editor of the journal Black Phoenix which, in 1987, was transformed into Third Text – often acknowledged as the most important journal for Postcolonial art and theory. In 1989, he curated the seminal exhibition, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, at the Hayward Gallery, London. Both the journal and the show marked significant turning points for art in Britain, spearheading the recognition of artists of Asian and African origins within the mainstream discourse of modernism.
Rasheed Araeen: A Retrospective is structured across five chapters: his early experiments in painting in Karachi in the 1950s and early 60s; his pioneering minimalist sculptures carried out after his arrival in London in 1964; key pieces from the 70s and 80s following Araeen’s political awakening; panel cruciform works from the 80s and 90s; and a selection of his new geometric paintings and wall structures.
Situated at the centre of the exhibition, Araeen’s Reading Room (2017) presents the issues of Third Text produced under his founding directorship and editorship (1987–2011) alongside conceptual diagrams key to the ground-breaking proposals put forward in his 2010 publication Art Beyond Art. Ecoaesthetics. A Manifesto for Art in the 21st Century. Together the objects, images and ideas Araeen offers constitute an expanded artistic practice that in its scope, approach and ambition continues to challenge the formal, ideological and political assumptions of Eurocentric modernism.
Born and educated in Pakistan, Rasheed Araeen (b. 1935) trained as an engineer before moving to Europe in the 1960s to become one of the pioneers of minimalist sculpture in Britain. Araeen accepted an honorary doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, on the 2nd of July 2018, and has three additional honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, East London and Wolverhampton. Selected Solo Exhibitions include: Rasheed Araeen, a Retrospective, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2017-2018); Rasheed Araeen, Going East, Rossi and Rossi, Hong Kong (2015-2016); Rasheed Araeen, Grosvenor Gallery, London/Dubai (2014); Zero to Infinity, Tate Britain, London (2013); To Whom it May Concern, Serpentine Gallery, London (1996).
