Bank of memories

The beautiful and prominent Serpentine public gallery in central London’s Regent’s Park is currently showcasing ‘Remembering’, a rare first show outside of India of the life’s works of Arpita Singh. The show was initiated following a previous show of Indian artists in 2008, called ‘Indian Highway’. The curators’ research and exploration at the time galvanised their intent to bring Arpita’s works to this major London gallery.

It has taken the team led by Hans Ulrich Obrist (artistic director), Bettina Korek (CEO) and Tamsin Hong (lead curator) more than a decade to collate her significant and rare collection of 160 works from both private collections and varied museums/galleries. Born in 1937 at Baranagar in Bengal, Arpita Singh is one of the pioneering post-Independence era artists in India. Over the six decades of her artistic life, she has explored and practised abstract, colour, surrealistic style, paper, small and large canvases, acrylic and watercolours.



The exhibition explores the full breadth of her practice, ranging from large-scale oil paintings to more intimate watercolours and abstract ink drawings. She is equally engaged with traditional art forms, Bengali folk art, Indian mythology, miniature motifs, city maps, surrealism, abstract and written text. The range of works is unified over decades by the repetition of symbols, figures, text and also by her ability to explore the depth and dimension of colour and texture, which she attributes to her early education at the Delhi Polytechnic and working with the Weavers Service Centre, which led her to be enthralled by the exquisite designs and the rich saturated colours of the textiles of old.

Early in her career, she was also exposed to kantha stitch form, which involved using old pieces of garment/saris to be repurposed. Arpita Singh, Devi Pistol Wali, 1990. Courtesy of Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, India.

© Arpita Singh These influences play out on the canvas through the use of rich colours applied in thick impasto style. She also draws from her personal diary from which she ‘pulls on threads’ which are her memories; these are brought to the surface and spontaneously represented on canvas. A key focal point in all her works across the decades has been the female figure and an exploration of women’s personal domestic life, as well as the socio-political and humanitarian context of their lives.

Her works explore feminine sensuality, vulnerability, motherhood and spiritual practices. Women are often middle-aged, cross-legged and luscious in form, barely dressed at times. There are also incarnations of the classical goddesses, such as in the painting ‘Devi Pistol Wali’, with her multiple arms, and standing on a male figure, holding a gun, a mango, and a vase of flowers, symbolically conveying both her domestic and public existence.

Arpita Singh, ‘Homeward’, Oil on Board, 2020. Courtesy: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi Her hallmark style is evident in the larger and more complex ‘epic’ works produced at the turn of the century, where she displays myriad details and repetition of images/words to reveal her own conscious and subconscious impressions. The larger works are infinitely layered and filled with historical and contemporary images, symbols and figures.

The detail unfolds much like the ‘Mahabharata’, but with contemporary references to warfare and conflict. In this sense, men in dark suits, turtles, bouquets of flowers, words, aeroplanes, military, knives and guns appear in repetitive loops across her works as if she is trying to make sense of the chaotic reality around and within her. ‘Whatever is Here.

..’, Oil on Canvas, 2006.

Courtesy: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Arpita’s work does not try to impress meaning on onlookers. Rather, by expressing the ‘flickers of her own mind’, she invites the viewer to experience the works in their own unique way.

Doing so, she is tackling the observed journey but also the universal journey which each of us engages with through death, loss, birth and beauty. When interviewed recently, she was asked what life advice she would give to others. She laughed and said, “I’m not here to give advice, everyone has their own course in life and they have to chart it themselves.

” Her sincerity and dedication to her art form has meant that she has remained true to her personal artistic identity and the eternal desire to tell the truth as she has experienced it. Arpita Singh’s success lies in making the unexamined inner life more central to all our concerns by encouraging the viewers to dig into their own bank of memories located deep within their inner core and to explore and make sense of these in a very personal way. The significance and powerful pull of her works was signalled by the arrival of Salman Rushdie, who came to the show to absorb a fellow artist’s oeuvre of works which were committed to telling the truth, come what may.

On till July 27 — The writers are founder and co-founder of IMA Foundation, which promotes top artistic talent from India and the UK.