An Art Show Is Seeking To Find Out The Colour Of Violence

What is Colour Violence? Transmedia artist Ali Akbar Mehta had asked the question online, and some of the responses were astonishing. Limitations of Liability-256 Million Colours of Violence, an exhibition is an eight-day program between March 17 to 28, 2017,structured around ‘256 Million Colours of Violence’ an interactive survey-based-research project by contemporary transmedia artist, Ali Akbar Mehta. 

Taking place all over Mumbai, Harkat Studios presents to the finaleof this project. Conceived as a response to the events unfolding after the Malegaon Blasts, it has grown to encompass several other activities in a world that have been radically changing.

The project began in 2016, and now includesmore than 200 entries of peoplefrom all walks of life. 256 Million Colours of Violence is available to the public for free. The exposition of the past survey results will install along with aparticipation booth inviting everyone to participatein the ongoing study. At the end of an extensive questionnaire, the participant answers the following question: “What according to you is the colour of violence?”

The question about colour is only the antipodal of 50 on the survey. Others transmit to family and criminal background, education, immigration dignity. Each taker should fill out the whole form, and enlighten their choice. “I want to eventually analyse the verdict and see if and how they reflect upbringing and cultural influences,” says Mehta.

Survey results are being represented as colour cards and hadestablished at Harkat Studiosin Versova, where you can also take the survey yourself. White a reciprocate from South Africa said white is the colour of pugnacity for him. “It represents the civil liberties the Whites have, the differences it generates within groups,” he wrote. A social experiment, a piece of Art, Interactive, and probably the most exciting exhibition we’ve ever done.

“Their choices apparently emanate out of very personal undergo, and this shows the extent to which the individual and the socio-cultural determine how we view violence,” says Mehta. The survey which culminates in an art exhibition this weekend started as a response to the events unfolding after theMalegaon blasts of 2006.

Ice white, said a young woman who had recently moved to Finland from relatively warmer climes.Having moved to a country where temperatures can drop to 35 degrees, she associates the colourlessness of extreme cold with violence, she added.

If ice white seems excessively precise, it’s because all respondents to Mehta’s poll were asked to druthers their shade from among the 256 million in the Photoshop colour palette. While many chose the more anticipated blacks and reds, there were some for whom pink was the greatest hue or blue, or yellow.

“The then home minister termed it saffron terror,followed by another party member’s association with terrorism with the colour black,” says Mehta. “I had to discomfort with those sweeping statements. They felt too generic. And that got me thinking about discrete and the colours they associate with violence.” Also five months, people from 10 countries around the world, conjointly Iran, Finland and Japan, acknowledged to Mehta’s online poll.

Blue, a man from Iran said blue prompts him of the burqas most Iranian women wear. “Not all women may endorse to the idea of covering themselves; for many, it’s a form of persecution, hence violent,” he adds. Pink, some field, the question concomitant this colour with fights that evolve from exertions for equality. Yellow, one respondent, associated this colour with the breaking of an egg, an act that feels violentto him.

Ice white a young woman who a moment ago reprogrammed from Finland to comparably warmer climes said that coming from a country where temperatures drop as low as 35 degrees, the colourlessness of coldhas come to connote violence to her. Brown“My wife and I had a bickering, and in a fit of rage, I threw the bar of chocolate I had in my hand. Ever since, whenever I see brown, I think antagonism,” wrote a respondent from Bangalore.