11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

The Sky Set Ablaze 2020 / Watercolour on wasli backed with cotton textile / 170 x 127cm / Collection: Rhea Goenka Jalan / Image courtesy: The artist NOTES 1 Varunika Saraf, artist statement, 2021. 2 Varunika Saraf, email to the author, May 2024. 3 Varunika Saraf, conversation with the author, May 2024. Varunika Saraf muses on historical worldviews, mythologies and art histories as a means to navigate today’s political and social situations. Through her work, Saraf examines contemporary realities of marginalisation, social injustice and proliferating violence, particularly in India with its model of democracy, shifting ideas of nationhood, segregation and environmental management. Saraf employs a rigorous painterly technique and scrupulously creates her own pigments, or develops watercolour from specially sourced pigments, in which she finds . . . a kind of quiet reassurance in the meticulousness of the process; it is that space to keep tweaking the colour palette till the picture surface starts reflecting the feelings I am holding space for. Often she explores intersections between material and subject; for example, the body of work ‘Caput Mortuum’ 2021, which comments on brutal acts of violence in India, was named after the synthetic iron oxide pigment that resembles dried blood she used as thin washes on selected works. 1 In this series — two works from which feature in the Asia Pacific Triennial — subtly rendered figures isolated against dense forestry or the emptiness of the night sky reference medieval imagery and apocalyptic visions as well as recent events. It Rained this Winter 2020 was made in response to the mass violence that occurred in February 2020 in Delhi and tensions around the impending pandemic. Saraf paints a vast skyscape recalling late winter in Delhi, with raindrops in five toxic colours. Between the drops, small groups carry out violent acts based on news reports of the time. In The Sky set Ablaze 2020, a lone male figure against a dazzling star- filled skyscape stands on a rock borrowed from German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 painting Wanderer above the sea of fog. Whereas Friedrich’s protagonist gazes thoughtfully at a sublime landscape covered in fog, Saraf’s figure looks powerlessly towards a hurtling comet — the impending destruction emphasising the smallness and transience of man against nature. Thieves in the forest 2024 sees Saraf focus her attention on the threat to nature and communities posed by environmental extraction, alluding to broader ideas of politicised violence and social complacency. Composed in meticulous detail on a vast sheet of wasli paper, the painting lovingly captures a lush forest inhabited by creatures, spirits and mythological figures, with humans encroaching at the edges of the natural habitat. A lone financier is depicted holding a finger up toward the forest, as if commanding a conquest. Armed officers, land surveyors, gangs carrying political placards, and flag bearers emerge from the perimeter of the forest, threatening anything in their way. While it’s not immediately apparent who the oppressed, the oppressors or mere spectators are in this composition, the figures clearly refer to political rhetoric and group mentalities associated with injustices in India. 2 In one corner, a party of men in a truck carry banners bearing the words ‘Vikas (Development) Party’. A host of other spiritual and celestial beings are hidden throughout the forest. Angels are caught in the trees, a moon with the face of a goddess is reflected in a pond, and, in reference to a Persian translation of the Mahabharata in a Mughal illustrated manuscript, a headless figure discharges a vivid stream of blood. The cast of characters stand as a reminder that encroaching humanity will erase not only nature, but also indigenous people and knowledge, leaving no space for angels, monsters or forest djinns. 3 Painted at the beginning of India’s 2024 election — the largest democratic exercise in global history — Thieves in the forest is a reflection on the danger of politicised notions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’. The narrative also gestures to our complacency in participating in democratic systems which allow such natural and cultural damage to occur. TARUNNAGESH BORN 1981, HYDERABAD, INDIA LIVES+WORKS INHYDERABAD VARUNIKASARAF ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 174 — 175