The First Sin

For Prokash Karmakar, the city—Calcutta—and its people, especially its women, became a place of multiple, conflicting realities within patriarchal set-ups of urban contemporary living. Karmakar explored the ins and outs of the city by keenly studying the people and preparing those experiences as the basis of his visual narratives. This Untitled work from the 1980s, rendered through crosshatching lines, seems to suggest a religious ceremony in progress, but seen in contemporary times, it could well be a pointer to a jingoistic congregation.