The Triumph of Icarus : Life and Art of Rasheed Araeen

2014

Boek; 187 p ill

Met biografie

Artikelenbundel belicht werk en leven van de Pakistaanse kunstenaar Rasheed Araeen. - The book The Triumph of Icarus is a compilation of essays. Araeen is a renowned London-based artist, originally from Karachi, whose works were displayed extensively in Pakistan and abroad. Araeen started working as a sculptor without any formal training. In the late 1970s, he launched an art journal, later renamed The Third Text, which deals with postcolonialism, the Third World, and ethnicity. Thus, Araeen is not just a long-standing Pakistani artist with a significant body of artwork, but also written work. The book is an almost 200 page thick bundle of sagacious essays that attempt to become the “best mirror of the oeuvre and writings of one of the foremost avant-garde artists…” Each insightful essay is accompanied by equally gripping photographs of Araeen’s work. Most of the writers, (mostly artists, but also a few academics and critics) are based in the UK, as Araeen has been since the 1970s. Many of them have met, interviewed or heard Araeen lecture in person. Therefore, they come up with personal and perceptive insights into the artist’s work. Most of Araeen’s work varies between modernist, abstract and minimalist. Occasionally there is an allusion of an engineering marvel. Sometimes it is a lucid manifestation of a Pakistani coming to terms with a new culture as well as modernity. As a former subject of the British Empire, Araeen slowly became more conscious of colonialism and the European exploits abroad. Araeen rejects the European tradition of presenting secluded and “virgin” territories in his artwork and instead returns to the “waste of exploitation”, which was later denounced by art dealers and critics. Araeen’s billboard project, titled “Golden Verses” included Urdu verses with English translations concealed in the border, meant to be a response to the issue of freedom of speech and the Satanic Verses controversy.

Located in: ARAEEN, RASHEED

ISBN: 978-969-9976-00-1

VUBIS: 2:100957