Deceptive Beings

When do we practice what we preach? When we follow, where do we reach?

These questions formed the basis of Deceptive Beings, a contemporary take on the contradiction between belief, behavior, and the manipulation of crowds. The exhibition explored universal themes: hypocrisy, blind obedience, power, and the erasure of individual identity in mass behavior. It deliberately avoided any identifiable spoken language or regional context, opting instead for an eerie gibberish soundscape and genderless, ageless visuals to keep the message universal. A stark black-and-white palette stripped away decorative distraction, focusing the viewer entirely on moral duplicity.

The narrative foundation drew from A.K. Ramanujan’s oral tale The Glass Pillar, where a pious moral preacher terrifies his congregation with visions of a red-hot needle-thin pillar in hell awaiting sinners, only to visit his mistress in secret that very evening, declaring that millions of sinners have enlarged the hole so wide that even elephants can pass unharmed.

Translating this moral contradiction into physical space involved masks, multi-channel projection, and rhythmic repetition. The visual vocabulary evolved through several iterative layers:

• A grid of 63 faceless masks: Handcrafted using papier-mâché over balloons, each mask is deliberately smooth and devoid of individual features, embodying the anonymous mass.
• Blinking eyes projection-mapped onto each mask: Programmed in After Effects, synchronizing forced gaze and collective surveillance across the entire wall.
• Black ink dripping across the white shells: Symbolic of corrupting doctrine and the slow imposition of an authoritarian identity.
• A silhouetted figure growing in scale: Animated with interior hypnotic spirals, representing charismatic manipulation taking over the collective conscience.

The sound design utilized four distinct gibberish vocal personas performed by Saurav Syam: an impassioned dictator mimicking historical speeches, a solemn religious figure echoed by a responsive chorus, a polished politician full of false conviction, and a distorted synthetic voice evoking anonymous online networks. These audio layers were punctuated with sharp projector slide-advance clicks, creating an atmosphere oscillating between hypnotic stillness and abrupt tension.

The exhibition occupied the Design Gallery at NID Ahmedabad on December 30–31, 2021. Visitors encountered the curatorial note at the entrance before navigating a dimly lit, intentionally constricting corridor formed by large softboard partitions designed to induce spatial claustrophobia.

At the corridor’s terminus, viewers entered a darkened room where the 63 masks glowed under high-contrast projection mapping. The loop cycled through stillness, rhythmic blinking, expanding spirals, and cascading black ink, compelling audiences to experience the visceral psychology of mass persuasion firsthand.

Deceptive Beings represented a pivotal point where cinema, spatial design, sound architecture, and physical making converged into a single public installation. It proved how visceral abstraction can communicate far more forcefully than literal narrative—showing that the physical arrangement of a space, paired with tactile textures and sensory disorientation, can directly alter how an audience feels and questions authority.