Lot 92: Wanted - XIII (Dilli Dilwalon Ki Series)

ASHIM PURKAYASTHA (B. 1967)
Wanted - XIII (Dilli Dilwalon Ki Series)
signed, titled and inscribed 'Dilli Dilwalon Ki Series Ashim 2006 Wanted - XIII Medium : ink on fortune Teller paper Year : 2006 Size: 50 x 17.6 cm.' (on the reverse)
ink on fortune teller paper
19¾ x 7 in. (50.3 x 17.8 cm.)
Executed in 2006

New Delhi, Vadehra Art Gallery, Shadow Lines - A Group Show of Drawings, August-September 2006, illustrated p. 83

Shadow Lines - A Group Show of Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2006, illustrated p. 83

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
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.