The IT Artist

Tyeb Mehtas grandson,Ali Akbar,pours his concern over violence on canvas.

While trying to come up with a title for this collection,I decided I wanted something representative of the entire body of work, says artist Ali Akbar Mehta. This body of work that the grandson of Tyeb Mehta speaks of,includes canvases,digital works,drawings,photographs and a video installation. All of these are on display at an ongoing exhibition in

Mumbai,called Ballad of the War that Never Was and other Bastardized Myths.

His primary concern is the rampant violence in the world today,but the Mumbai-based artist chooses to express it in a slightly different manner. The subject of a number of these works is the Harlequin,the popular comic servant character from the Italian Commedia dellarte. While the Harlequin is not associated with violence,Ali uses the character allegorically. Ive used the idea of the Harlequin as the Other,making the hero the primary character. The hero,too,is represented as a human spirit,juxtaposed in situations of helplessness, he says.

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A number of the works on display are digital prints some are paintings created on a computer and others are paintings done on already existing photographs,also on a computer.

Interestingly,the photographs he uses to paint over are of people you would see on a street a child selling goods at a traffic signal,a balloon man,and so on. The idea,he says,was to work with photographs not taken for this particular purpose.

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