Photo: Danko Stjepanovic
Artwork Details:
Artist(s)
Rasheed Araeen
Title
Happy Christmas
Date
1979–1983
Medium(s)
Acrylic, spray paint, colour photographs, mirror
Dimensions/Duration
122 x 91.5 cm
Photo Caption
Happy Christmas
The late 1970s witnessed a significant shift in Rasheed Araeen’s practice, coinciding with broader political unrest in the United Kingdom and Europe. Frustrated at the willful rejection of his work at an institutional level, Araeen created a series of portraits in which he seemed to vandalise his own image. This body of work displays the culture wars at play in the west at the time, reflecting the racist trauma in advance of its claim to power over the subject it seeks to subjugate.
