The Unholy Trinity

During a time of severe Islamization under the military dictatorship of General Zia Ul Haq in 1980s Pakistan, which fostered an increasingly oppressive environment for women, Lala Rukh involved herself with the women’s movement, co-founding the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) and commencing a life-long commitment to political activism. Rukh was proactively involved in the Forum’s activities when local printers controlled by the government in Lahore refused to print their protest materials and newsletters. Rukh began screen printing, designing and producing many of the WAF’s provocative posters that called for the equal rights and freedom of women.

In the latter half of the 1980s, Rukh also set up printmaking workshops to assist women involved in similar movements in the region. The poster The Unholy Trinity was designed by women at a workshop in Koitta, Bangladesh in 1986. The poster depicts a seated religious man, with a sack of money in his lap, with the words "men," "money" and "morality" printed below him. He holds prayer beads in one hand and his other hand reaches out, pressing down on the face of a woman. It was then screen-printed at a workshop Rukh held at the Eidgah Women’s Centre, Sargodha, Pakistan in 1991.