Umar Rashid is on the island of Sado, in Japan, on holiday with his family. He’s taking a break from this current iteration of global insanity, as he says, and learning the secrets of the forest and the sea. It’s a well-deserved break because Rashid has been critiquing the global insanity of colonial histories for years. He’s done the work of researching the sometimes-horrific realities of the past and then dealing with the soul-crushing knowledge that humanity hasn’t changed that much. His art is thought-provoking historical revisionism; he looks at the villains, heroes, and atrocities of the past and asks the question, what if things happened differently? Rashid gives insight into the emotional weight of dealing with historical trauma and how he uses humour, the superpower of the oppressed, to tackle serious issues, as well as into his current group show at Dallas Contemporary, Who’s afraid of cartoony figuration?...
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