• War List CODEX

    Web Interface view, War List CODEX, 2023, Online Database and web-based installation. Cruel Radiance, Backlight Festival 2023, Tampere Art Museum, Galleria Saskia, Tampere, FI. Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • Narrating WAR

    Performance view, Narrating WAR, 2022, site-specific installation and performance (duration: 180 min.). Abdication of the Geniuses Festival, Oksasenkatu 11 Gallery and Maunulatalo, Helsinki, FI. Photo courtesy of Vidha Saumya.

  • The war that is coming is not the last one – part I

    The war that is coming is not the last one – part I, 2021, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 1600 x 290 cm. Part of 'To Err is Human', Mänttä Art Festival 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow

    Performance view (Gallen-Kallela Museum), Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow, 2021 installed sound piece with online archive: https://www.thelostutopianmeadow.com, and performance in collaboration with Vidha Saumya, varialambo, and Joss Allen. Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • 256 Million Colours of Violence

    Installation view, 256 Million Colours of Violence, 2020, 3 single-channel videos. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ali Akbar Mehta (India/Finland) is a transmedia artist, curator, researcher and writer based in Helsinki since 2015, whose practice investigates narratives from conflict zones and power structures, offering countermeasures to everyday experiences of violence, conflict, and trauma. Through immersive and interactive archives, his work foregrounds overlooked bodies, data, networks, and ecologies, creating open-source, decolonial knowledge systems that mirror and challenge contemporary realities.

Mehta’s projects explore how digital tools and the internet can envision new, free, and open-access archives. Works like Site: Stage: Structure (2014), an archival project mapping the hidden histories of Mazgaon, Mumbai, or 256 Million Colours of Violence (2016-), an online participatory survey generating a color-based vocabulary for violence, uncover narratives absent from formal accounts. Other works, such as Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow (2020), a 72-stanza poem interweaving Finnish food histories with bio- and necropolitics, and Central Park Archives (2020), a locative map interface narrating resistance to gentrification in Finland, offer alternative modes of engaging with history and space.

Projects like WAR ROOM ECHO (2014-), an installation documenting global conflicts from 3100 B.C. to the present, and Purgatory EDIT (2022-), a user-generated VR experience exposing the sensory overload and subliminal manipulation of digital technologies, demonstrate his commitment to addressing both the emotional and technical aspects of his work. On one hand, he explores the emotional toll of violence and seeks ways to heal or subvert its effects; on the other, he critically engages with the extractive and controlling architectures of digital systems and infrastructures.

Through these ongoing projects, Ali Akbar Mehta’s work exemplifies the power of archives as both artistic practice and critical inquiry, using them to confront the hidden dimensions of violence and technology while advocating for knowledge systems that prioritize care, agency, and resistance.

Ali was born in Mumbai and is currently based in Helsinki, Finland.

With support from

Delfina Foundation’s Network of Patrons for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia

Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland

Artist’s website

Link

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Please note all artist-in-residence biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit the artist’s website.