ASHIM PURKAYASTHA (B. 1967)

Ashim in his series of works titled Wanted portrays the official images of terrorists that the government issues after they are recreated as sketches based on accounts from eye witnesses. A master of allegories, the artist calls them "symptomatic terrorist portraits" and plays with the idea of the interchangeable identity of a terrorist versus an activist.

In Wanted - XIII, the artist has used papers used by fortune tellers in India who inscribes horoscopes of people in these sheets of paper. It is an allegory of the many thousands of people, whose portraits are sketched for identifying terrorists, often misidentified, and their lives re-written, as if someone else had taken charge and created a new horoscope for them.