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Rasheed Araeen
Christmas Day
1979
Four photographs
Each 49 × 69 cm (19 ¼ x 27)
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Christmas Day (1979) is a series of photographic self-portraits taken on Christmas over several years. The photographs capture Araeen's barely visible reflection in the window of a Circle Line train. The effect is to make himself a ghostly presence in the passage of subterranean city reflections and fragments of ads. The work is an exploration of visibility, isolation, fitting in and place. It shares many of these concerns with Araeen's collages such as How Could One Paint a Self-Portrait (1978) or Ethnic Drawings (1982), but does so with judicious economy of meaning and subtlety of form.