Ali Akbar Mehta (b.1983, Mumbai) is a Transmedia artist, curator, researcher, and writer. Driven by the desires of knowing and participating in the creation of an equal world, he creates immersive, interactive archival projects on the crossovers of culture, technology and knowledge. These archives investigate and offer countermeasures to forms of violence and conflict generated as everyday collateral. By examining narratives drawn from zones of conflict and dominant power structures, he foregrounds overlooked bodies, data, networks, and ecologies.
His practice experiments with new archival rules that depart from institutional and coloniality-driven legacy archiving. He generates new knowledge systems of how narratives of history, memory, and identity may be mapped to make visible hegemonic power relations and silenced historical materialism. Such archival mappings – drawings, paintings, new media works, net-based projects, poems, essays, theoretical texts, and performances both of bodies and networks – seek to create knowledge systems that outline a vibrant new political public sphere.
His current project Purgatory Edit is an archival project shaped as a user-generated montage-based VR experience and cinematic installation that highlights long-term and deliberate methods in which digital technologies enforce subliminal visual manipulation, sensory overload, data fatigue, psychological reaction, and ideological numbness. His doctoral research at Aalto University Practising Online Performativity: Constructing Politically Conscious Archives as Participatory Art in the Age of Data, Power, and Violence investigates (infra)structural and performative relations between online archives and their users. He frequently writes and lectures on museum-building as a critical artistic praxis and archiving as a site for Infrastructural Praxis through the lens of decoloniality, queer-feminist praxis, critical diversity and socio-politics of borderization.
His work as performances, installations, talks, and curatorial interventions have been presented at the Helsinki Biennale (2023), documenta fifteen (2022), Tampere Art Museum (2023), Taide Museo ARTSI (2021), Gallen-Kallela Museum (2021), Ainola Museum (2021), Visavuori Museum (2021), Mänttä Art Festival (2021), ONOMA Summer Exhibition-Fiskars (2020), Galleria Saskia (2023), Myymälä2 (2020), Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum (2017), Venice Biennale Research Pavilion (2017), Third Space (2016), TAO Art Gallery (2011-2018), Galerie Mirchandani+Steinruecke (2010), Art Heritage (2010), among others. Several of his projects, such as 256 Million Colours of Violence, Outsiders at Work, Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow, and Central Park Archives, exist as ongoing online projects.
His work has been awarded the State Art Prize by the Ministry of Art and Culture, Finland (2020) and the Tutkijaliitto-palkinto award by the Finnish Association of Researchers (2019). His work is supported by grants from the Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Center Finland, the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Helsinki City, and the European Union.
He has been a co-curator of the HAIHATUS 25 exhibition in Joutsa, Finland, was a co-curator of the Helsinki Biennale 2023: New Directions May Emerge, and a curatorial advisor to Party Office b2b Fadescha for documenta fifteen. He is a co-founder of the Museum of Impossible Forms and was its co-artistic director from August 2018 to December 2020. He has held positions of accountability in several artist-led associations and institutional spaces in Helsinki. He is a doctoral candidate in the Contemporary Art Department at Aalto University, Helsinki, and holds an MA in ‘Visual Cultures, Curating, and Contemporary Art’, from Aalto University, Helsinki, and a BFA (Drawing & Painting) from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai.
Orcid Researcher ID:
Partners and Collaborators
Partners
© Copyright Ali Akbar Mehta 2021 — Website dev-design by mpalash
Projects
- 2026
- 2025
- 2024
- 2021
- The war that is coming is not the last one, part I
- WAR • ROOM • ECHO: Regarding the Pain of Other Cyborgs
- 2019
- 2014
- What a Wonderful World
- Mazgaon Interviews – Fakhruddin and Khateeja Merchant
- SITE : STAGE : STRUCTURE
- 2012
- The Superhero Series
- 2009
- 2007
Curatorial work
- 2026
- 2025
- 2024
- HAIHATUS 25
- 2021
- How to work together? Extended notes on collaboration
- How to Work Together? Seeking Models of Solidarity and Alliance
- Public Talk: Pauliina Feodoroff
- Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities Spring 2021
- 2018
- Cyber Archive
- 2017
- 2015
- 2014
- 2013
- 2012
- 2011
- 2010
- 2009
- 2007
Performances
- 2026
- 2025
- 2024
- 2021
- Ballad of the Lost Utopian Meadow: LIVE
- Narrating WAR / HABITAT 1
Performance-Installation, in collaboration w/ varialambo - Reciprocities
- 2020
- Glitchverse
Souja/Shelter Festival 2020, (online) - Narrating WAR, New Performance Turku, Festival 2020: Mobilities
Performance by Ali Akbar Mehta with varialambo
- 2019
- direct contact // feedback
w/ Vidha Saumya, Pixelache Festival 2019: Breaking the Fourth wall, Helsinki - Narrating WAR, Mymmälä2, Helsinki
Performance Reading by Ali Akbar Mehta
- 2018
- Narrating War, Experimental Event VI – La Torre de Babel, Pori
curated by Anna Jensen, Andrea Coyotzi Borja and Sanna Ritvanen, Valimo Hall of Palmgren Conservatory - Narrating War, Carinarnica, Nova Gorcia
- Narrating War, Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki
curated by Vishnu Vardhani as part of Performance LAB VII - Cyborg Archives: GarbageInGarbageOut, TIFA Working Studios, Pune
Performance directed by Ali Akbar Mehta, and performed by Luv Mehtani - Cyborg Archives: Can Archives Speak?
Performance directed by Ali Akbar Mehta and performed by Ganesh Totekar - Congratulations, the Space is invaded: Now What?
part of Space Invaders VI, curated by Anna Jensen and Elisa Suvanto, Helsinki
- 2017
- Narrating War, Clark House, Mumbai
- Narrating War, Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki
curated by Heidi Hänninen
- 2016
- Narrating War, Kallio Public Library, Helsinki
part of Chimurenga Collective's 'The Pan African Space Station', curated by Ahmed Al-Nawas - Narrating War, Pispala, Tampere
- Play the Space, Stupid!
Performance in Collaboration with Gabriela Gazova, Parsa Khamehkosh, Ragnar Rael, and Saša Nemec
- 2015
- 2014
- 2013
- 2012
- 2011
- 2010
- 2009
- 2007
Texts
- 2026
- 2025
- 2023
- The Politics of Togetherness: Beyond the integration infrastructure of State and institutional apparatus
In Z. Karimi, et. al. (Eds.), Rethinking Integration. Volume 9, Migration Institute of Finland - The Boycean double-bind: Exquisite Tension as a pedagogy of free play
At first glance, Exquisite Tension (2005) may look like one of Boyce’s most unassuming works. When viewing the 4-minute video work for the first time, one is confronted by an apparently casual rendition of a simple ritualised action, yet set in a scene with a combination of actions unfamiliar to us as an everyday experience. In it, the hands of the artist plait the hair of performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and curator Adelaide Bannerman, friends to Boyce but perhaps strangers to each other, where the latter is invited to be a stand-in for the artist during the recording of the work.
- A rhythmic play of possibilities in time: Obliquo Policromo as a holder of existential potentialities.
Giorgio Griffa’s practice is one where what he may have to say is less important than what you and I, as viewers, may have to imagine. Griffa stated this unequivocally when he said in 1972, “I don’t represent anything, I paint”. His work has always sought to move beyond the prescriptive ordering of surface, intuitive marks, and exuberant colours, instead pushing to question the medium’s relationship with knowledge. Inherent in Griffa’s practice is a proposal that what a painting ‘is’ is not nearly close to what a painting ‘could be’ – a holder of existential potentialities, an engine of possibilities driven by its audience.
- A tessellated life: Space Structures as a philosophy of perseverance
Rasheed Araeen is best known for his formal, geometric sculptures, often created from simple, sometimes industrial materials that renounce traditional sculptural hierarchies and compositional concerns. He has been an ardent advocate of postcolonial and decolonial positions as put forward in the magazine Black Phoenix (co-founded by Araeen in 1978–1979) and later in Third Text (founded by Araeen in 1987). As curator of the landmark exhibition “The Other Story” (Hayward Gallery, London 1989), Araeen has continually challenged knowledge(s) fortified through histories of coloniality and hegemonic discourses of Western modernism.
- On the Edge of the Re(lation)al: Between and Beyond Cyber Realities
In Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás & Marianne Schädler (eds.), Beyond Matter, Within Space: Curatorial and Art Mediation Techniques on the Verge of Virtual Reality, by ZKM Karlsruhe and Hatje Cantz
- 2022
- On Recognising the Moment of Hope: Speaking in Echoes with Hiwa K.
Ali Akbar Mehta interviews Hiwa K. on navigating the capitalistic system of art, ‘urgency’ of climate change and notions of homeland.
- Who watches whom? Ruminations on power, gaze, and field through Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch
This review of Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch, exhibited at the Finnish pavilion of the Venice Biennale, seeks to question whether issues pertaining to embodiment and social intervention – and by extension, research conducted and artistic practice developed through it – can ever be free of the power relations implicit in the political, identity-driven understanding of society today.
- Bearing Witness: Articulating an Archival Practice
- 2021
- Touching/Transforming: Notes Towards Collective Critical Artistic Research Practices and Processes
with Bäckman, F., Close, R., Godin, M-A., Kallio-Tavin, M., Mehta, A. A., Qureshi, A., & Sadatizarrini, S., Research in Arts and Education, 4. Aalto University. ISSN 2670-2142 - Generating (An)Other Economy: Working Together at the Museum of Impossible Forms
Written as a contribution for the Impossible Reader 2020titled*, How to work together?* Seeking models of solidarity and alliance, published by the Museum of Impossible Forms in 2021
- A longing for something written in memory: Library as Archive as Excavation Site
Kirjasto/ Library does not formally announce a thematic drive at its outset, but situates itself within an abstract idea ‘archiving’, or of what a collection, library, or an archive could be.
- Cultural production and racism: How to challenge racist structures
in 'Rasismi, valta ja vastarinta' (Racism, power and resistance), (ed) Suvi Keskinen, (pub.) Gaudeamus - Museum of Impossible Forms: Voicing the Margins
in 'Marginaaleista museoihin'. (From Margins to Museums), (eds.) Rastas, Anna & Koivunen, Leila, (trans.) Nurmenniemi, Jenni, Tampere: Vastapaino, FI
- 2020
- Processing In-Between(ness)
in 'IN BETWEEN', HIAP summer Residency publication, (pub.) HIAP, Helsinki, FI - The Shape of Museums to Come
“The Museum of the Future was published in 1970. 43 contributions to the discussion about the future of the museum. 50 years later, a publication brings together 43 new contributions by international authors from museum practice, from theory, education, art and architecture. They create concrete visions of a museum of the future: confident and doubtful, critical, clearly positioned and subjective. What do visions of the future accomplish and what do they make impossible? How empowering or disempowering are speculations about the future for a change in the museum of the present?”
- SAFE{R}: Evolving the Conditions for Collaboration
in 'Six years in the Third Space', Third Space, Helsinki (published online) - Walkin the Portal
Curated by Vivek Chockalingam and Marialaura Ghidini, Walkin Studios, Bangalore. - Who is Welcome? – Thinking Hospitality as Museum of Impossible Forms
Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 2, (ed.) Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela, (pub.) Archive Books, Berlin, in collaboration with Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Helsinki, FI - A Cyber Archive of Questions
A Cyber Archive of Questions is an essay published in ‘cohabitant/mutants’, Restricted Fixations, issue one – an independent zine curated and edited by Renuka Rajiv.
- Akbar Padamsee 1928-2020: At 25, he was 25000
- 2019
- Saša Nemec: My Teenage Angst Never Faded, I Am Still Rebelling
Interview by OUTSIDERS AT WORK - Abhinit Khanna : Make Memes not War
Interview by OUTSIDERS AT WORK - Tuike and Simo Alitalo: All Ears are Equal
Interview by OUTSIDERS AT WORK - Notes for Radical Diversity
- How to be a hospitable without being a motel: Thinking Hospitalities
Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 1, (ed.) Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela, (pub.) Archive Books, Berlin, in collaboration with Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Helsinki, FI - To Not Wait for the Archive: Home and Labour mired in the complications of Invisibalisation
Home Issue, Visual Culture and Contemporary Art Journal #5, (ed.) Saara Mahbouba, Paola Jallili and Else Lagerspetz, published by Aalto University, Helsinki 2019 - Atlas of Lost Beliefs (for Insurgents, Citizens, & Untitled Bodies)
Curatorial Text, written as part of Co-Artistic Directorship at Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki
- 2018
- FOOD and Other Practices at the Arthouse
Visual Culture and Contemporary Art Journal #4, (ed.) Ali Akbar Mehta and Vidha Saumya, Published by Aalto University, Espoo, 2018 - Cyber Archive: Being and Doing Knowledge
MA thesis, Aalto University, 2018 - Cyber Archive: Archiving as a sustainable counter-hegemonic practice
Hakara Journal, (ed.) Ashutosh Poddar and Noopur Desai, 2018 - An Ode to Erkki Kurenniemi
Essay by Ali Akbar Mehta - Colours of Violence, AROOP III - Totems and Taboos
Contribution for Aroop, volume 3, Totems and Taboos
- 2017
- The Photons of Politics: Footnotes for a New History
RAB-RAB Journal for Political and Formal Inquiries in Art, (ed.) Sezgin Boynik, 2017 - Locating: The Museum of Impossible Forms
Kone Foundation Boldness Blog, 2017 - Border Crossing: Reshaping the Agency of Struggle
Interview with Ranjit Hoskote, CuMMA Papers Publication Series, (ed.) Nora Sternfeld, 2017
- 2016
- Narrating War
- The Inescapable Manifest Destiny of the Artworld Culture: Defining Art through the state of the Artworld today
Essay by Ali Akbar Mehta
- 2015
- No one at the ceremony remembers to mention the artist
Essay for Vidha Saumya’s exhibition 'No one at the ceremony remembers to mention the artist', Third Space, 2015 - Perfect Ghosts
A brief historical record of the Kruunuvuori Villas, by Ali Akbar Mehta
- 2014
- Why is an archive of wars required?
- War List CODEX
- Artist Book 1: Performers of Mazgaon
- Artist Book 3: Kwan Tai Shek
- Artist Book 2: Daarukhana
- 2012
- 2011
- Poems
- A Body Split in Two
International Gallerie, Journal of Contemporary art, issue 30, (ed.) Bina Sarkar Ellias, Mumbai
- 2010
- 2009
- 2007
Talks & teaching
- 2026
- 2025
- 2024
- The Nature of Information: Exploring the difference that makes a difference
- Countering Archival Fascism: Moving from technopolitical regimes to technodiverse cosmologies
- Where to start when everything is urgent – intersectionalities, priorities and empathy
- Ec(h)o Effects: Conversations on War and Environment
- 2023
- Curating Across Cultures
- Cyber Realities, Hybridity, and the Users (of Archives), Aalto University, FI
- Collective and community-based art practices and their political potential
- Agonistic Intelligence/s (or another AI/s)
- Archiving in the Age of Data, Power and Violence
- read-write-modify
- 2022
- Who Watches Whom?
- The Politics of Curating
- How to work together: tools and practices for transgressional collective work
- 2021
- A small introduction to the history of art from the indian Subcontinent
- Decolonisation in the arts and cultural fields
- Artists Vidha Saumya and Ali Akbar Mehta: Recipes come together from resources - and we are not living in the world where everybody have the same resources
- Central Park Archives: Access, commons and networks of care
- Mobility and its Discontents
- 2020
- Kuvan Kievat
- Archives as Knowledge Systems
- Towards a New Internet: In conversation with Palash Mukhopadhyay
- Violence in Finnish Society: In conversation with Arvind Ramachandran
- Digital Creativity and Entanglement: In conversation with Timo Tuhkanen
- Is there a room with just a colour? In conversation with Camelo Ramiro
- CreaTures: Panel Discussion on Creative Practices for Transformational Futures
- Central Park Archives - workshops
- Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 2 Readings with Annet Dekker, and Susanna Ånäs and Ali Akbar Mehta
- 2016
- 2013
- 2012
- 2011
- 2010
- 2009
- 2007
Exhibitions
- 2026
- 2025
- 2023
- Cruel Radiance
curated by Harri Palviranta and MarKo Karo, Backlight '23, Tampere Art Museum, Gallery Saskia, Photographic Center Nykyaika, and Gallery Koppelo, Tampere, FI - Technologies of Critical Conscientization
- 2022
- Abdication of the Geniuses
- Into the Void
curated by Farbod Fakharzadeh, for Ars Pori 2022 - Commonplaces and Entanglements VI
- Locus of Control
curated by Abhinit Khanna and Anoushkaa Bhatnagar, House of Creativity, Mumbai, IN
- 2021
- Data Vitality: Soft Infrastructures and Economies of Knowledge
Dipoli Gallery, Aalto University, Helsinki, FI - Reboot Me Softly ↻
19th edition of Piksel Festival, Bergen, NO - Central Park Archives, Maunulatalo
Installation produced by m-cult, Maunulatalo, Helsinki, FI - To Err is Human
Mänttä Kuvataideviikot, curated by Anna Ruth, Mänttä, Jyväskulä, FI - Time Machine and Utopias: Longing, Living conditions, Homecoming
curated by Hanna Johansson, at the Ainola Museum, Visavuori Museum, and Tarvaspää Museum, FI - Reciprocities
- 2020
- Is there a room with just a colour?
Myymälä2, Helsinki - The Meadow
Onoma Summer Exhibition 2020, curated by Taru Elfving, Fiskars Village - Central Park Archives sound walk
launch of the prototype interface - Maunula Commons
- A Tapestry of Time
TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2018
- Assembly of Access
TIFA Working Studios, 2018 - To Participate in the Archive
- No Corners
TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2017
- Partizaning Maunula
Maunulatalo, Maunula, Helsinki - OUT2
Research Pavilion: The Utopia of Access, Venice Biennale, Venice - IS/NOT: Sculpture for the Post-Truth Era
Aalto University Learning Centre, Helsinki - Ateria/ The Meal
URB 2017 + Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki, 2017 - Limitations of Liability
- 2016
- 256 Million Colours of Violence, Exhibition
Third Space, Helsinki - Immersion, 2016
ex-ADDLAB Space, Aalto University, Espoo, FI - Space Invaders IV: Heterotopia
Espoo, 2016 - Whose History is it Anyway?*
Aalto University, 2016 - SOAK, Illusia
Kalasatama, Helsinki - Immersion 2016
Former ADD LAB Space, Aalto University, Espoo
- 2013
- Tagore Lost and Found
Curated by Bina Sarkar Ellias, IndiaBulls Art Gallery and Auction House, New Delhi - Small is Beautiful – II
TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai - Beyond the Canvas
Curated by Kalpana Shah and Sapna Kar, TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai, - Equilibrium
TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2012
- Small is Beautiful
TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai - Of Men and Supermen
India Art Festival, by TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2012 - SPACE 118
- 2010
- April Salon
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai - Three New Voices: Dimensions in Time & Space
Art Heritage, New Delhi
- 2009
Press
- 2026
- 2025
- 2024
- 2023
- 2022
- Helsinki Biennial 2023 is created together with five curatorial collaborators
- Bearing Witness: Articulating an Archival Practice
- 2021
- Mänttä's Fine Arts Weeks can give itself to the use of artificial intelligence - Man has a similar relationship to artificial intelligence as to God
- Environmental anxiety is a phenomenon more than a hundred years old
- Artists Vidha Saumya and Ali Akbar Mehta: Recipes come together from resources - and we are not living in the world where everybody have the same resources
- Makkaraa pitelevä koira herättää Pariisin-ikävän Mäntässä
- Ali Akbar Mehta & varialambo - Narrating WAR / Habitat 1
- 2020
- Collecting Art in Archives: In Conversation with Ali Akbar Mehta
- Mehta & Ånäs: Keskuspuisto-arkistot
- The art of making art seen through the lens of serving and consuming food
- 2016
- The Spaces Are Alive
- 2015
- The BB Art Showcase: Ali Akbar Mehta
- Site Specific
- Interview: Memory & the Maximum City
- Chinese Fortunes and other Mumbai Memories
- 2014
- The Possibility of Alienation
Exhibition Essay by Sumesh Sharma – co-curator, Clark House Initiative, Mumbai - The Possibility Of Alienation – Ali Akbar Mehta
- Odes and Inquisitions: Sino-Indian Connections in Recent Indian Art
- Hidden Histories of Mazgoan
- Interview
- 2012
- Visual Disobedience
- 2011
- Nothing is Mundane
- Dystopia and Urban Imagination
- Luminous Matter Press Kit
- Comprehending Violence
Review by Abhishek Bandekar - Somewhere between Science and Subjectivity
Interview by Rahul D'Souza - Not on Noah’s Ark, but on the Raft of the Medusa
Essay by Ranjit Hoskote, Mumbai, 2011 - In A Liminal Age
Interview by Rahul D'Souza
- 2009
- 2007