Varunika Saraf employs a rigorous painterly technique and scrupulously creates or customises her own pigments. Her practice draws upon historical worldviews, mythologies and art histories to navigate today’s political and social situations, particularly examining contemporary realities of marginalisation, social injustice and proliferating violence.

Alongside It rained this winter 2020 and The sky set ablaze 2020, which reflect on acts of violence in India, the Asia Pacific Triennial features a major new work. Thieves in the forest 2024 sees Saraf focus her attention on the threat environmental extraction poses to nature and communities, 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.