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Rashid Rana has been called the "artist's artist" (Rajesh Punj, "Rashid Rana", Asian Art Newspaper, March 2012, accessed online). By taking apart canonical works of art at a molecular level and reconceptualising them through various mediums, he transforms them into self-referential instruments of radical art deconstructing politics, culture and the media. Using techniques of digital manipulation, Rana destabilises cultural representations and... Rashid Rana has been called the "artist's artist" (Rajesh Punj, "Rashid Rana", Asian Art Newspaper, March 2012, accessed online). By taking apart canonical works of art at a molecular level and reconceptualising them through various mediums, he transforms them into self-referential instruments of radical art deconstructing politics, culture and the media. Using techniques of digital manipulation, Rana destabilises cultural representations and makes the audience confront their own preconceived notions. Working primarily within a postcolonial context, the Pakistani artist's works interrogate South Asian politics of identity. Currently exploring this theme at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Rana and Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta are jointly collaborating on an event called "My East is Your West", uniting their representative countries for the first time ever. This shared platform explores the concepts of location and dislocation, transnational identity, and the political and cultural mechanisms within a nation state that determine its relationship with geographical territories.

The lot Newspapers (2010), which appeared in his major solo show 'Everything is Happening at Once' in the U.K. in 2011, is a sculptural work made of re-composed digital images. "Removed from their original context, each of the appropriated images is translated from the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional sphere and back again. With each refraction, Rana's work changes in shape - a trope that the artist sees as a reflection of his inner self, and manifests formally through sculptures that are constructed on symmetrical grids and mirror images" (Omar Kholeif, "Rashid Rana", Frieze Magazine, Issue 147, May 2012, accessed online).

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