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PRESS RELEASE

Homeward ARPITA SINGH 18 March – 16 April 2021 D-40 Defence Colony, New Delhi

Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce a continuation of our presentation titled Homeward, featuring a recent body of work by Arpita Singh, which was recently presented as part of On Site, a collaborative exhibition by four leading galleries held at Bikaner House, New Delhi, earlier this month, and is now on view at our modern gallery.

Described as a figurative artist and a modernist, Arpita Singh still makes it a point to stay tuned in to traditional Indian art forms and aesthetics, like miniaturist painting and different forms of folk art, employing them regularly in her work. Afflicted by the problems that are faced each and every day by women in her country and the world in general, Singh paints the range of emotions that she exchanges with these subjects – from sorrow to joy and from suffering to hope – providing a view of the ongoing communication she maintains with them.

In this latest body of watercolours on paper and oil paintings, Singh’s cartographical autobiographies assume new dimensions through an intensification of colour, accenting her imagined landscapes with the flourish of expressionist emotion. With compositions foregrounded in movement, Singh tends to emphasize the potential of individual agency operating within collective constraints, though her mapping doesn’t seem to prioritize any one aspect – whether the fictional, mythical, personal, public fact or dream. These almost ‘think-scapes’ capture constructs of space in abstraction, whose protagonists occupy their frames implicitly and navigate time, cultures and history through an assemblage of connection. Her individual nostalgia evocatively intervenes in cultural narratives surrounding control, movements and freedom, especially those of women. By introducing observation points that are topographically flat, Singh personifies questions of beginning and belonging so pivotal to individual and collective journeys. The protagonists themselves emerge as part of the landscape, their internality in a state of flux as outlined by the world, however it is composed, at large.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Since her first solo exhibition in 1972 at Kunika Chemould Gallery, New Delhi, Singh’s work has been featured regularly in shows of Indian art held in the country and internationally. These include exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1982; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1986; in Geneva in 1987; and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1993. She has also participated in the 3rd and 4th Triennials in New Delhi; the 1987 Havana Biennale; and the Indo-Greek Cultural Exhibition in Greece in 1984.

Most recently, a retrospective was held at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, in 2019, where Singh presented a stellar body of works reflecting a lifetime of practice, which was met with stupendous critical acclaim. She has participated or has forthcoming presentations in the Asia-Pacific Triennale (2020–21); the Gwangju Biennale (2021); Kochi Biennale (2021); and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2021).

Her works have also been exhibited at ‘Progressive to Altermodern: 62 Years of Indian Modern Art’at Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 2009; ‘Kalpana: Figurative Art in India’presented by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) at Aicon Gallery, London, in 2009; ‘The Root of Everything’at Gallery Mementos, Bangalore, in 2009; and ‘Modern and Contemporary Indian Art’ at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2006. More recently, her work has been featured at the Freize Art Fair, New York, in 2019; the Talwar Gallery, New York, in 2018 and 2017; Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2015; and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in 2014, among others.

Singh has won several awards throughout her career, including at the 1981–82 All-India Drawing Exhibition in Chandigarh, the 1987 Algeria Biennale, and the 1991 Parishad Samman from the Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi.

The artist lives and works in New Delhi.