How Much Lower Can The Coffin Go

This early work by Baroda-based Rekha Rodwittiya is the epitome of the shape her distinctive career would take in which human degradation, violence, and gender politics, would occupy centre stage in her works. Rodwittiya made this painting soon after the completion of her education at M. S. University, Baroda, and the Royal College of Art, London. The distorted, startled and frightened faces of the subjects depict their disbelief at the death of a loved one, and the misfortune that they—the dead and the alive—must endure as they seem to be pushed deep into the netherworld by forces that operate above, forces that subjugate the powerless, smother them, and deny them any chance of rising again.