UNTITLED (STILL-LIFE WITH SKULL)

Skulls are typically represented in Catholic churches as a reminder of our mortality, that this world is not our permanent home—memento mori in Latin, which means, ‘Remember, you must die.’ F. N. Souza’s still-life work invariably represents objects that are used in liturgical practice and this Untitled (Still-life with Skull) is a reminder of how his work in the genre belonged, as art critic and curator Geeta Kapur explains, ‘neither to the intimate comforts of a home nor to the glamour of the market-place.’