He studied Zoology and Fine Arts. She is currently a postgraduate research tutor in the Curating Contemporary Art course at the Royal College of art and Professor in Fine Art and Transcultural Studies at Middlesex University. 

She is the former editor of Third Text,. She was the editor of the anthologies, Global Visions (1994), Reverberations: Tactics of Resistance, Forms of Agency (2000), and, with Gerardo Mosquera, Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture (2004). A selection of her essays, Vampire in the Text, was published in 2003. She wrote essays for the catalogues of documenta11(2002) and Sharjah Biennial (2005), and for Shades of Black (2005), an exploration of the legacy of British Black Arts Movement, The American West (2005) and Vision, Space, Desire (2006), a reflection on contemporary indigenous north American art and subjectivity. 

Her recent essays on individual artists include Francis Alys, Black Audio Film Collective, Sonia Boyce James coleman, Willie Doherty, Jimmie Durham and Edgar Heap of Birds.