Mequitta Ahuja (b. 1976)

Executed in 2014, See-Saw exemplifies Mequitta Ahuja’s ‘auto-mythic’ approach to art-making. Based in Chicago, the artist draws her African American and Indian American roots to explore notions of tribalism, identity and heritage. Allusions to religious iconography, folk murals, ancient illuminated manuscripts and Hindu miniature painting combine with flashes of self-portraiture in a process that the artist terms ‘auto-cartography’. Included in the Saatchi Gallery’s 2016 exhibition Champagne Life¸ Ahuja teases out conversations between disparate artistic idioms, frequently working out her ideas through an extensive period of drawing, reading and observation before committing them to canvas. ‘My aim as an artist is to engage in the conversation about representation that has been going on for millennia’, she explains. ‘… By combining ideas sourced from outside of the Western canon with large format oil painting, I weave my complex cultural experience into the history of art.’