Though this exhibition, subtitled “Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain,” was initiated by Rasheed Araeen almost ten years ago, it is curiously appropriate that it should finally come to fruition at this particular moment. The recent exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, entitled “Magiciens de la terre,” demonstrated the current surge of Western interest in non-Western contemporary art. What Araeen illustrates is that despite this interest, artists of African and Asian descent who live in Western capitals are falling through the cracks. After exhibiting primarily white artists

These are strange paintings—rude, sacred, fearsome. How could they be otherwise when they bear, in whole or in part, the image of the donkey, holy beast of burden? From the cruciform figured by its hide to its lovingly rendered hairy asshole, the donkey is alluded to in various ways. Painted along the lower edges of these works a text reads “The image . . . has nothing to resemble . . . and fascination is passion for the image.” We are transfixed by a torture of matter and made giddy by stroke upon stroke of seething paint. Shades of gray, white and the palest brown are applied to a barely