Important Notice

Arpita Singh’s imagery is replete with narratives of ordinary people thrown in the midst of crises. Her work came to challenge the mythical “safe haven” of domesticity in the 1980s and ’90s, through socio-political unravellings of the time and her personal encounter with conflict and tragedy. In these two decades, she depicts the quotidian with a discordance through the use of recurring motifs and mannerisms that build up to suggest meaning:... Arpita Singh’s imagery is replete with narratives of ordinary people thrown in the midst of crises. Her work came to challenge the mythical “safe haven” of domesticity in the 1980s and ’90s, through socio-political unravellings of the time and her personal encounter with conflict and tragedy. In these two decades, she depicts the quotidian with a discordance through the use of recurring motifs and mannerisms that build up to suggest meaning: “…from the activities of men groping, grappling, crouching, sleeping, dying down there, just below—the motifs she has chosen to inscribe as stereotypes change meaning in spite of/because of obsessive repetition.” (Nilima Sheikh, Arpita Singh: Exhibition of Paintings Oils and Water Colours, 29th September—31st October ’94, Vadehra Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, not paginated).

The current work, made in 1991, falls in the beginning of a phase that goes on to assume darker undertones in succeeding years. Here, palm trees and potted plants recur as motifs, surrounded by the banter of family gatherings and solitary figures. Potted plants and seated or sleeping figures make an appearance in a previous work entitled “Munna Appa’s Garden”, 1989, where the dissonance between the indoors and outdoors is implied through the juxtaposition of these motifs. Here, the discordance is evident from the blurring of the intimacy of enclosed settings, and the vastness of the outside. Figures surround symbols, either in clusters, as seen at the bottom, or in isolation. In his essay on Singh’s oeuvre, artist Peter Nagy attributes her use of symbols and weaving of narratives to her “Humanist outlook. Social situations, household rituals, intimate portrayals and commemorative events have figured prominently in Singh’s works for many years and her most recent endeavours seem to reflect an increased poignancy with the passage of time and the cycles of life.” (“The Simplest of Means of Arpita Singh”, Memory Jars: New Paintings and Watercolors, Bose Pacia Exhibition Catalogue, New York, 2003, not paginated)

“In the paintings of Arpita Singh, the inner space cannot be securely separated from the space of the streets. Arpita extrapolates urban experiences to create a visual noise in her work, drawing upon the excessive and the absurd. Her work is layered with tragic metaphors” (Roobina Karode and Shukla Sawant, “City Lights, City Limits—Multiple Metaphors in Everyday Urbanism”, Art and Visual Culture in India 1857- 2007, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2009, p.203)

Singh’s stylistic technique is also to be considered to unearth an important dimension to this work. Her use of patterns and ornamentation to achieve an intricacy has been attributed to her time spent at the Weavers’ Service Centre as a textile consultant. Text appears as a coded syntax consistently, waiting to be decoded by the discerning viewer. The naivety in rendering of her figures—flat and anatomically simplified as seen here—is alluded to her studies of picture book illustrations, while also evoking the same. These devices help set and heighten the mood of her works, while adding layers to her narrative. Here, the palette is limited to shades of white, blue and red. Blue dominates the work, imbuing an odd sense of tranquility that comes with quietude. This seems discordant, however, considering the congestion of the motifs. The colour palette also hints at the absence of linearity in time-space, with multiple events simultaneously unfolding. The texture resembles a “scrubbed and chalky surface… the air in her paintings is thickly palpable, soupy and even threatening … [this] could be termed an Emotional Realism” (Peter Nagy, “The Simplest of Means of Arpita Singh”, Memory Jars: New Paintings and Watercolors, Bose Pacia Exhibition Catalogue, New York, 2003, not paginated).

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