Sacred Protectors - Asma Menon

The painting moves through three distinct worlds, stacked one above the other. At the top, crows perch among flowering branches, watchful and still. Below them, a village scene opens into a forest thick with pattern and hidden form. At the base, three guardian figures sit enshrined in arched niches, rendered in the bold flat style of ritual folk art. They are keepers. Watchers. Menon draws on the visual language of South Indian temple traditions to ask something quietly urgent. Who do we place at the threshold, and what exactly are we asking them to protect?