The deafening is about a silent scream. A a noise so subterranean, so complex, so loud that it is actually impossible to hear it. It is a noise that grows from plants, from archangels who deliver messages, from the fury of the third eye of Shiva, from demons with garlands of heads and in the mind of an old man quietly reading message in a scroll. But these noises can never be separated, and there is no use in trying to see them as separate. In a way, the work is formed not of these visual ingredients, but of emotions. Which is why the little girl in the centre of it all. Not only because some part of me always wanted to be a little girl, but because she is the only one capable of holding the tangled purity of these emotions.

Sirish Rao

If I am to talk of a process of work, I would have to say that I immerse myself in patterns. I work with patterns in terms of layers, patterns of visuals, patterns of language, all the while searching for a new pattern that might emerge out of the repetition and the layers I place one on top of the other.

Sometimes I treat patterns - however complex they are - as cells. As the basic building blocks of the visuals and emotions I am trying to create in my work. In doing this, I often create images that are so noisy and layered as to be manic, or even claustrophobic. At any rate, it seems to be as hard to disentangle the process as it is to unravel the layers I use in the work.

A somewhat unconscious echo in The Deafening is the current situation in Gaza. I did the piece while I was in Boston, surrounded by friends who were organising protests against the invasion, and feeling strongly that they had to be involved in opposing it. I found myself sympathetic, but an outsider in many ways - quite unaware of the details of the situation, and not used to the culture of protest around me. But the anguish of the situation and the anguish it stirred in others, made me feel that all I was capable of was a silent scream.

Avinash Veeraraghavan