Born a decade before the partition of India, Arpita Singh is widely considered one of the most important contemporary artists of the country today. She is known for exuberant colours applied in thick impasto and paintings that seem to burst at the seams with life-forms and motifs.
Beginning her artistic journey at a time when the Indian art-world was predominantly male dominated, Singh was a leading figure of the second generation of modernists, along with female artists like Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh.
Almost instinctively, Singh began to concentrate on the female figure. In the artist's own words, "I make women because that form I know very well...Because things which I know very well, from that point only can I travel to things unknown to me." Even if inspired by her interest in form and her familiarity with it, rather than an informed thematic preoccupation, Singh’s pictorial world is certainly dominated by women.
Often unclothed, sometimes distorted, the women in Singh's paintings defy gravity to levitate and float. It almost seems as if Singh is providing a sense of freedom to these painted women, something that was unimaginable during her early years as an artist and is still a distant dream for many women across the world. Her work may therefore be seen as referencing the collective dreams and hopes of women. And perhaps why despite her own reluctance to be labelled, she has come to be recognised as a significant feminist voice in contemporary Indian art.
Singh's women, with their 'imperfect' bodies and not-so-ideal poses, are more real and relatable than most images of women in popular consumerism today. Of note is the recurring figure of the middle-aged woman.
For instance, this figure displays clear signs of ageing, embodied by the wrinkles on her face. She's confidently seated atop a floral stalk, as pollen rises up from the flower to spread over her lower body – perhaps to hint at a shared connection of fertility?
Arpita Singh's paintings are rich with such details that are ripe for interpretation, providing an endless scope of possible meanings. But the artist leaves such conclusions to her viewers.
"Symbols are intended only when you want people to understand something – like advertising or illustration. Painting is something very different. Like music. You don’t understand a sound but you know what it is.”
This analogy of music is a wonderful lens with which to look at Singh's work that is often so evocative of atmosphere and mood, triggering emotional responses as easily as interpretative analysis.
Exemplifying this, is the suggestion of violence, chaos and conflict, particularly in relation to female bodies, often found in Singh’s work. The sense of unease and dread is generated both by the inclusion of menacing symbols such as the gun and the creation of strange atmospheres and surreal forms.
Untitled (1986) by Arpita SinghMuseum of Art & Photography
Amidst the calming shades of blues and greys and the delightful abundance of floral motifs in this painting, for instance.
A pistol intrudes into the compositional frame. We are left in the dark about the identity of the gun-holder or what is really transpiring, but a sense of impending danger seems to enter the frame with it.
The sense of looming menace is further amplified by the surreal shadow cast by the chair, that occupies a central position in the painting.
At times, Singh’s women appear submerged and lost in the chaotic environments they occupy, and at other times, they seem to rise up as symbols of power, resilience and freedom.
In a work titled Devi Pistol Wali, for instance, she produces her own spin on the traditional iconography of the Hindu goddess, Mahishasuramardini or Durga. Garbed as a widow (a frequently recurring figure in Singh’s works), this devi holds up a small black revolver, pointing it to a male figure who falls out of the frame.
The demon that Durga traditionally tramples upon is swapped here with the figure of a man, while another bows down in front of her in veneration. Two of her five hands hold fruits, but interestingly, the other two are occupied with holding up the veil of her sari draped over her head.
Singh articulates her own approach to commissioned works such as these “guided conversations”. As it was always meant to be a Devi work, a female figure was central and her starting point, she notes, but her response is mediated by her own personal visual language, unique vocabulary and fluid artistic process.
For Singh each work is a conversation, and progressively develops with one form following another. The final product springing from her desire to explore colours and lines and objects that speak to her, rather than specific stories. She is aware of the rich narrative possibilities that her paintings offer, but insists that their symbolic significance lies outside her scope and role as the artist.
"If I make something, say a cross, I would say I wanted to make that cross only. It doesn’t represent anything I know, or that I’m conscious about [at the very least]. I wanted to make a circle, so I made a circle, and that’s it.”
However, she poetically adds that she believes that “things come from a source. You have inherited so many things. So many things are in your genes. Maybe five hundred or five thousand years ago, something happened to someone in your line and that trauma has remained and become a part of you now. You cannot say what the source is, the source is always lost.”
With over five decades dedicated to the medium of painting, Arpita Singh both defies and denies strict artistic labels. Her extraordinary body of work acts as a reservoir of collective memory and culture, uncovering and championing the female body, while navigating the complex realities of the world that we inhabit and the infinite possibilities of the worlds we can imagine.
“I am always having a conversation with my works, and when a particular work is done, the canvas tells me to stop.”
