Inspired by his travels in India, Yeldham assimilates Vedic philosophies about the cyclicality of existence embodied in the Sanskrit word Saṃsāra. Yeldham analogises the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction inherent to Hindu mythology as a snake shedding its skin, weaving his works with powerful serpentine imagery. In this way the artist draws on an idiom he came across in India: ‘learn to live with the snake in the corner of the room’. This allegory of taming one’s fears and coexisting with creation and destruction features in Brothers – a painting inspired by an Indian miniature from Rajasthan. Wrestling in a midnight cosmos, the interlocked brothers represent the Creator and the Destroyer, and in their movement hatches a life force. Emanating from the figural mass is a constellation of cane sticks, a motif often used by Yeldham to represent mangroves yet here it becomes astral. It is as if, at any moment, the forms might transmogrify or disperse into the cosmic void. Poised between struggle and embrace, the brothers enact a language of love as Yeldham reveals how within opposition there is intimacy; within destruction there is creation.