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Structures, Struggles and Collective Creativity: Interview with Rasheed Araeen
Rasheed Araeen is known as an artist-activist heavyweight who pushes boundaries—in his artworks, in institutional critique and of the art world’s exclusivity. As the founder of the critical journals Third Text and Black Phoenix, the British-Pakistani artist has given voice to artists considered to be on the peripheries, particularly women and minorities in the West, and has become an important advocate for art discourse that detaches itself from a Eurocentric point of view. Late last year, Araeen’s first major traveling retrospective exhibition was staged at Eindhoven’s Van Abbemuseum, providing an overview of his 60-year-long career. The show delivers Araeen’s history of active confrontation of exclusion in the art world, as well as his political action and collective engagement in art, from his early years in Karachi to his move to London in the 1960s, and even his most recent works. To coincide with the extensive presentation, ArtAsiaPacific spoke to the artist about his artistic development and other endeavors since his days in Pakistan.
Portrait of RASHEED ARAEEN. Photo by Socrates Mitsios. Courtesy the artist and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
On the occasion of your extensive retrospective at the Van Abbemuseum, and after a successful year of being represented at Documenta 14 and the 57th Venice Biennale, what are your thoughts on your 60-year-long career today?
It’s a difficult question, and I don’t really know how to respond to it without being emotional. It has been a long career, although “career” is not the right word to describe my struggle of 60 years in pursuit of what is, historically, an important idea. However, despite all the difficulties and obstacles that I have faced, I’m glad that I did not give up on this idea. The pursuit for this idea is evident in the retrospective at the Van Abbemuseum.
What are your thoughts on the show taking place in the Netherlands first (and only traveling to the United Kingdom later on), given how you have spent much of your career actively trying to engage British art institutions?
I have lived and produced art in London for almost 54 years, but without any support from the art system. In fact, I have spent my life in the atmosphere of total indifference, if not hostility, of the British art establishment. A piece of my work, which is now considered to be a pioneering Minimalist sculpture, had in fact been visible since 1970, but was totally ignored, particularly by the Tate, which promoted exclusively the work of New York Minimalism with the implication that there was no development of Minimalism in Britain. One shouldn’t therefore be surprised that my retrospective is taking place in Holland.
Has your perspective on decentering art canon and institutional hierarchies changed in the context of your current exhibition?
I’m not sure much change has taken place. Although the Van Abbemuseum is very concerned with this issue, and wants to deal with it, the work of one artist cannot produce much change. The problem lies in Eurocentrism in art history, and can only be resolved by revising how art history is recorded. But this cannot and will not happen so long as modern art history is written by the West’s historians.
Do you see a similar or different set of narratives in the art market today compared to ten or 20 years ago?
Sometime about 20 or so years ago, the art market decided to expand in line with the global expansion of capitalism, now called globalization, because artists from all over the world were not only allowed to enter this new, globalized art market, but were also shown in biennials and Documenta. However, this change is still controlled and legitimized by the West’s art institutions and the Eurocentric discourse they represent; as a result, only a particular kind of work is recognized and celebrated. However, Documenta 14 [held in Athens and Kassel in 2017] tried to escape from this context and phenomenon.
I would like to talk about the art you produced during your early days in Karachi, specifically your work My First Sculpture (1959) and how your parents’ original table became part of its current presentation at the museum?
My early work in Karachi, from 1953 to ’58, comprised of portraits, street scenes and fishing boats in Karachi Harbor, all done somewhat realistically on paper with pencil, crayon or watercolor. But in 1958, I began to experiment with various things, producing views beyond their realistic representation. I could now think and perceive, using my imagination, out of which emerged a geometry that became fundamental to my subsequent works in Karachi as well as in London. In 1959, I picked up a piece of metal from the street, took it home, and put it on a table, and then called it My First Sculpture. This table was made for my father by a carpenter in 1952, and when I placed this piece of metal on it, the table was covered by an embroidered tablecloth by my mother. So, this work in the retrospective now represents not only what I conceived as a sculpture, but also the memory of my mother and father inscribed into it.
How did your interest shift to minimalist works, particularly with the early “Boats: Towards Abstraction” series (1958–62) in Pakistan that you just mentioned?
In Karachi, my interest in geometry came from different sources: first, my engineering work; and then the shapes of fishing boats in Karachi Harbor; and finally my visit in 1962 to the city of Hyderabad, where I became fascinated by the geometry of the wind towers on the roofs of houses. However, when I arrived in London in 1964, I wanted to forget everything that I did in Karachi, and start afresh with new ideas. It was the work of Anthony Caro that led me into doing what I did in 1965. It wasn’t a shift to minimalist works, as there was no Minimalism [in Britain] back then, but the re-emergence of my interest in geometry, which I then re-formulated as symmetrical “Structures.” If these works are now being seen as minimalist works, it is to do with the established ideas in art history.
Some of your “Structures” that were shown in the retrospective at Van Abbemuseum were made for this exhibition, and previously only existed as drawings on paper. How did you feel about producing these works today—as an engineer seeing your plans finally realized?
Two works were specially made for the show; some others were re-constructions of works that I created in the 1960s but were destroyed. However, I’m pleased with the newly made works as they filled the gaps in the historical genealogy of my work.
From joining the Black Panther movement, founding Black Phoenix and then Third Text in the 1970s and ’80s, to seeing the array of political statements in your works, how do you feel about the development of your identity as an activist and artist?
It was a journey of which I’m now proud. It was necessary for me to go beyond what was expected from me as an artist, and what I produced was not merely for the art market. It was indeed a hard struggle, as there were many obstacles, and I had to confront them by doing what was not possible by only making beautiful art objects. In trying to deal with these obstacles, what came out of this was knowledge, not only of art but also the nature of these barriers, would have not been possible otherwise. However, I’ve now reached the point when I can bypass these obstacles, and make beautiful things in pursuit of the idea that I had as I began my journey.
Let’s move to contemporary reiterations of two of your seminal works, The Reading Room (2014–17) and Zero to Infinity (1968–2007; 2016–17). In your eyes, why do you think the collective is relevant today?
The creativity of the collective mind has always been there, but has either been suppressed or marginalized by the emergence of the artist as a unique individual. It is the creativity of the traditional potter, weaver, carpet-maker and so on that interests me. The works you have mentioned are not unique but represent an on-going creative process by which I want to recognize this collective creativity, and in doing so I want to transfer my own creativity to the masses.
You once described your career as a “pursuit of an idea which has not ended.” What will that pursuit look like in the following years?
You are right, it is the pursuit of an idea which has not ended. It is continuous, but its continuity depends on the collective creativity of the masses. The future of this pursuit may become a collective farm, run organically by the people themselves and its produce shared equally, which in fact underlies the geometric symmetry of my “Structures.”
Rasheed Araeen’s retrospective exhibition at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, is on view until March 25, 2018.
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