A Domestic Scenario

Early in his career, Jogen Chowdhury earned renown for his unique style of using the human body as a background to manifest society’s moral corruption and collective anguish, rendered through his distinct lines—borrowed from Kalighat pat paintings but utilised in a way uniquely his own—and cross-hatching style, of which this work is a perfect example. A woman in saree lies in what appears to be her personal chamber. But dense criss-cross lines over her persona and around her allude to tension—perhaps, sexual and unwarranted—in the air, also attested to by a male presence and her bare bosom.