The face of Gandhi covered by a Kashmiri child’s pellet-riddled hands:

–a 2016 digital work by Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain

In a published interview, Ather Zia asked Masood Hussain: “Do you remember the first painting you made, what was it about, what inspired it?” He answered: “Yes I remember the first painting that I made. It was the portrait of a man with a bandaged head. The bandage was slightly stained with blood near the temples. It was inspired by an incident of stone pelting that I witnessed as a child in 1960s.”

Ather then asked Masood: “Has it {the occupation} brought any change to your perceptions about beauty, considering there is so much bloodshed & violence?” He answered: “Personally experiencing the 20 years of bloodshed & violence has forced me to paint a series of paintings portraying bloodshed & violence because you can’t notice beauty when there is violence around.”