How 2 new Asian and African-focused cultural institutions are decolonising art in London

Last month, the Chinese art collector and patron Yan Du opened a non-profit art space in a magnificent Grade I listed building in Bedford Square, the 18th-century heart of London’s Bloomsbury district.

She has called it YDP – Yan Du Projects. Naming it after herself was “just a joke”, she said at the press preview.

But she also said that YDP and Asymmetry, her other non-profit project – launched in 2020 in London to support a new generation of Chinese and Sinophone curators – are “guided by the same spirit: myself”. That spirit wants to ensure Asian artists claim their place on the global arts scene.

In the same week, in a Grade II listed building about 10 minutes’ walk from YDP, Lina Lazaar opened an arts institution called Ibraaz.

Like YDP, it is a UK-registered charity that describes itself as “a brave space for art, culture, and ideas from the Global Majority”. It, too, is the further amplification of an original concept.

Lazaar is the president of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, which was set up by her Tunisian-Swiss father in 2005, and Ibraaz, which means “to shine a light on” in Arabic, grew out of the 2011 Arab spring protests as an online platform for visual culture from the Middle East and North Africa.