Varunika Saraf

Varunika Saraf is an artist and art historian based in Hyderabad, known for her large-scale paintings that engage in a conceptual dialogue with the past and critically analyze contemporary political and social issues, particularly the exponential rise of violence. Saraf draws upon a multitude of archival sources such as art history, newspapers, and popular culture to create her works. Since 2001, she has incorporated the use of wasli, a surface created by the Mughal technique of binding together layers of paper, modified to suit her unique artistic requirements. Saraf uses a rich deposit of color, built up by different washes of watercolors ground from natural and synthetic pigments that she creates herself. The use of dyeing, appliqueing, collage, embroidery, and block-printing further enhances the visually rich surfaces of her works.

Saraf's works seek to expose the uncomfortable reality of violence in our times, imbued with the spirit of historical inquiry into contemporary situations. She interrogates the contemporary world through the perspective of the marginalized and highlights lesser-known events to shed light on the present. Saraf engages with "apocalyptic manuscripts" in her recent works, drawing inspiration from medieval imagery to develop a language that allows us to prophesize, process phenomena, fear, as well as political and social upheavals. Saraf uses the iconography of miraculous and apocalyptic visions to engage with the growing phenomenon of violence that is bringing us to the brink of near-totalitarian terror.