Shiva sits surrounded by fog that twists like living sinew, the atmosphere charged with moonlit energy. His dreadlocks fling outward in wild rhythm, his dumroo pulses, and the original lingam rises beside him as the axis of creation. The full moon behind him is covered in silver leaf, glowing like a doorway to his pure consciousness. Vasuki’s colours shift between serpent and cloud, flowing through deep jewel tones that echo the richness of sacred ornament. The mantra curves across the moon, whispering its ancient plea:
“Free us from bondage; restore us to ourselves.”
This Shiva is raw, free, ecstatic, a spiritual force who broke every social expectation, a reminder that liberation is our natural state.
A vivid, contemporary reimagining of Shiva’s cosmology- where ancient symbols, sacred animals, and lush couture- coded colour palettes merge with the rawness of street textures and modern India. Each work brings together the ornamental and the primal, the spiritual and the urban, the divine and the everyday contradiction of a culture that reveres animals in myth yet neglects them in life.
Across the series appears Shiva’s powerful liberation mantra, written in full:
“ॐ त्र्यम्बकं यजामहे सुगन्धिं पुष्टिवर्धनम् उर्वारुकमिव बन्धनान् मृत्योर्मुक्षीय मामृतात्।”
(“Free us from bondage; restore us to ourselves.”)
The series returns Shiva to his essence: the wild, free, untamed consciousness- dreadlocked, dancing, unconcerned with norms, unshackled by shame, embodying OM as the pulse of liberation.
Every canvas becomes a mantra in itself: a reminder that all life is sacred.
