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David Cameron announced in February 2011 that the multi-culturalism in Britain had failed. As the son of immigrants, born in the UK I reacted to this with trepidation and the mildest tinge of relief; the relief being that if there is a wasp in the room, as the saying goes, you at least want to know where it is. I still believe London is one of the most racially tolerant places to live, and it is always a pleasure to mix with Indians, Poles, Jamaicans, Chinese, Cockneys, Kurdish, and share the feeling that wherever we may be from originally, if you have never gone on the London Eye and know how to get home at three in the morning then you have to the right to call yourself a Londoner.

Over time any cultural difference can be assimilated if there is a material advantage in doing so.

Shame of the memory of this material gain requires the development and application of a suitable spiritual, cultural or mythical narrative.

The structure of this intervention can be determined either through the steady repetition and adaptation of certain behaviour, or through the manipulation of cultural signifiers by groups with vested interests.

The savage has been an image closely related to the history and representations of Latin America. This essay discusses varied artistic reinterpretations of the savage paradigm and the ideologies of domination and violence that support it. Though savagery seems to have changed forms, leaving the colonial world behind to reemerge as extreme violence often associated in Latin America with political questions, oppressive regimes, revolutionaries, and more recently drugs, the term is still deeply enmeshed with battles of dominion and representation involving many actors. The works analyzed address in either direct or veiled ways some of the convoluted relations between the so-called first and third worlds, alluding to everyday realities and imaginary ones through an extended notion of savagery.

It is perhaps a somewhat cliched statement to begin this introduction to the work of the internationally recognised Iranian artist Sadegh Tirafkan, by saying that he is very much a product of his circumstances, both on an international and an individual level, but this is clearly what informs his art. For Sadegh is the epitome of an Iranian artist whose innovative and utterly contemporary works are profoundly influenced by the legacy of his traditional Iranian heritage roots.