The Other Story: Exhibition Documentation in Rasheed Araeen’s Archive

In a proposal to the Hayward Gallery in 1985 for an exhibition titled The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain—that sought to foreground the contribution of these artists to contemporary art—Rasheed Araeen writes,

“The fact of their being of Afro/Asian origins is somehow reflected in the nature of their art activity. It is neither ‘ethnic’ nor an emulation of what is produced by the Western artist. In their attempt to come to terms with the new cultural environment as well as the modern time they have ‘adopted’ the methodologies of the twentieth-century, particularly those which are part of modern art, but in doing so they have in fact created the synthesis, innovations, that express their own experience and visions.”

Rasheed Araeen moved to London in the 1960s after his education in Karachi, and is considered a pioneer of minimalist sculpture in Britain. Apart from his artistic practice, he founded the critical journals Black Phoenix and Third Text. He also took on activist roles with organisations such as the Black Panthers and Artists for Democracy. The proposal highlighted above was among a number of correspondences carried out between Araeen, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Hayward Gallery starting from 1978. These contain antagonism from the institutions towards Araeen’s ideas, on claims that the exclusive emphasis on Afro/Asian artists did not include “European ethnic minorities.” Araeen’s consistent refutation was that there had been a neglect of the specific contributions of Afro/Asian artists to contemporary art in Britain whose work signified their active presence in the modern context within which they practised. He felt an urgent need to situate them within a historical perspective. This was particularly important bearing in the mind the manner in which their vocabularies were different from European artists—such as Brâncuși and Picasso—who drew on and appropriated forms such as African sculpture.

After his relentless pursuing, finally, more than a decade later The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain opened to the public in 1989. The exhibition was seen as a polemical intervention in the largely Euro-American canon. It was a rare showcase for the work of twenty-four artists of Asian, African, and Caribbean cultural heritage who had lived and worked in post-war Britain.

This piece presents a selection of photographs from Araeen's archive, digitised by Asia Art Archive. Taken by Araeen himself, they serve as documentation of the installed exhibition. If observed carefully, it can be seen that the images are tilted slightly, probably captured on a hand-held. This was possibly shot with the intention to provide a wide frame and view of the context of the display in the gallery, rather than details of the work themselves—the site was crucial to represent. It is interesting that these images of the white cube gallery space are devoid of audiences, and yet we are able to glimpse bodies within several of the works themselves (despite Araeen’s personal practice of minimalist abstraction). Visible across the mediums of painting, sculpture and installation, it is pronounced quite clearly in a photographic work by London-based Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, “Over My Dead Body,” exhibited outside of Hayward Gallery.

Read alongside the proposals and initial letters of rejection from the institutions, the photo-documentation reveals a more complex struggle than the neatness it instantly portrays. These works were disturbing the white cube, and gaining rightful entry into a dominant circuit and history—an expansion towards other stories.

For more context and discussions around the exhibition, read Notes from the Field: Navigating the Afterlife of The Other Story by Hammad Nasar and Off the Shelf | Letter from Rasheed Araeen to Joanna Drew, 26 January 1986 by Kiki Su in Asia Art Archive’s online journal, IDEAS.

All images by Rasheed Araeen. Images courtesy of the Rasheed Araeen Archive, Asia Art Archive.