Fear of outsiders is the defining issue of our times. But is it actually our own selves we\u2019re scared of? And could art hold the answers? Here, the British Art Show\u2019s curator reveals why he\u2019s exploring our deepest dreams and nightmares<\/p>\n
One of the moral low points of Keir Starmer\u2019s tenure at Downing Street was his \u201cisland of strangers\u201d speech, with its rhetorical echoes of Enoch Powell and dispiriting description of a nation fractured by difference. After widespread criticism, Starmer recanted his words, if not the sentiment behind them. Yet his choice of language was a reminder of how the idea of the stranger \u2013 representing immigration, but also wider, more inchoate anxieties about otherness and difference \u2013 holds such a potent place in Britain today.<\/p>\n
In fact, from masked anti-migrant protesters on the south coast to xenophobic riots over the summer, from politicians vowing to stop the boats to immigration polling as the No 1 concern among UK voters, it\u2019s probably true to say that fear of the stranger is the totemic issue of our times.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/1a2054fb6d489900b7490db351a76403c6ab3fa1\/500_0_5000_4000\/master\/5000.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=2fb76c7d30cb89b4ef86305b1ce41eee\" "\\"No")
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