He´s written letters to the prime minister, joined the Black Panthers and spent a lifetime on art that can provoke, delight and be climbed on. Now, at 84, Araeen has opened a restauranto Warning: contains an image some may find disturbing`You won´t find anything interesting in my life. I´d rather talk about the work,` says Rasheed Araeen. It is quite the understatement. The 84-year-old Karachi-born artist is no stranger to incident. `My life in Britain has been my struggle against the establishment. It took many forms - within art, outside art, in writing, in performances, in writing letters to the prime minister,` is his own pithy summation.He first wrote to Tony Blair after `there were ugly things spoken about the Muslims` following the July 2005 bombings in London. `One of the points they kept making was that Muslims were against modernism. They were backwards, uncultured, uncivilised. I wrote and said, `Here is an example of what Muslims have contributed to British modernism´.` Continue reading...
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