It is celebrated as a landmark initiative for reflecting on the colonial legacy of Britain and for establishing the work of overlooked artists of African, Caribbean, and Asian ancestry.
[2][3] Curated by artist, writer, and editor Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story was a response to the "racism, inequality, and ignorance of other cultures" that was pervasive in the late-Thatcher Britain in the late 1980s.
[6] The exhibition included works by twenty-four artists, including Ahmed Parvez, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Aubrey Williams, Avinash Chandra, Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Balraj Khanna, David Medalla, Donald Locke, Eddie Chambers, Frank Bowling, Francis Newton Souza, Gavin Jantjes, Iqbal Geoffrey, Ivan Peries, Keith Piper, Kumiko Shimizu, Lubaina Himid, Mona Hatoum, Rasheed Araeen, Ronald Moody, Saleem Arif, Sonia Boyce, Uzo Egonu, Hassan Sharif and Li Yuan-Chia.
[8] Some critics argue that The Other Story was made possible thanks to the growing grassroots activism related to the British Black Arts Movement, feminist critique, and anti-racist discourses in the UK, the US, and South Africa.
In response to Biswas, Araeen wrote that the question of equal representation of black women artists is related to the "nature of postwar Afro-Asian immigration" in the UK while calling her approach "phoney feminism".