LONDON.- Serpentine presents Remembering, the first institutional solo exhibition of Arpita Singh’s work in London. Open at Serpentine North from 20 March to 27 July 2025, the exhibition will showcase works selected in consultation with the artist from her prolific career which expands over six decades.
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Born in Baranagar in 1937, Singh emerged in the 1960s, developing a painting practice that brings together Surrealism and figuration with Indian Court painting narratives. She combined this with periods of abstraction, using pen, ink, and pastels to form dynamic lines and perforations on the surface to create layers and textures.
Remembering at Serpentine North will explore the full breadth of her practice, ranging from large-scale oil paintings to more intimate watercolours and ink drawings.
The paintings on view will celebrate Singh’s endless experimentation with colour and mark making to figuratively explore emotional responses to social upheaval and international humanitarian crises.
Arpita Singh said: “Remembering draws from old memories from which these works emerged. Whether I am aware or not, there is something happening at my core. It is how my life flows. Serpentine is a known and well-established gallery. To have a solo show there is a pleasure, honour, and surprise to me.”
Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director said: “We are honoured to present London’s first institutional exhibition by Arpita Singh, who for more than half a century has produced a prolific body of work as one of India’s most singular painters and whom we first encountered during the research for the 2008/2009 exhibition at Serpentine South titled Indian Highway. Through a practice that blends Bengali folk art with modernist explorations of identity, Singh vividly portrays scenes of life and imagination, stories, and symbols, uniting the personal and the universal. This landmark exhibition builds on Serpentine’s legacy of spotlighting trailblazing artists yet to receive global recognition for their work, like Luchita Hurtado, Faith Ringgold, Hervé Télémaque, James Barnor, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Barbara Chase-Riboud.”
From the 1990s, Singh increasingly explored themes of gender, motherhood, feminine sensuality, and vulnerability, alongside representations of violence and political unrest in India and internationally. In particular, the artist engaged with the distinctive impact of local, national, and global events on the psychology of women, particularly those within her social network.
Included is Singh’s 1990 oil on canvas Devi Pistol Wali which is one of her earlier depictions of women in outdoor spaces. In this work, the artist imagines the many-armed Hindu goddess Devi dressed in a white sari and standing on the body of a man.
She holds her sari over her head with two hands, and in her other three hands are a pistol, vase of flowers, and a mango. The artist delineates the picture plane here and in many of her other works with a border of flowers, as is often seen in Indian miniatures. Singh’s works incorporate repeated symbols such as the turtle, airplane, car, and portrait busts of a woman as is distributed across the silver background in this painting. Devi Pistol Wali is demonstrative of Singh’s utilisation of Indian myths and folk stories reimagined in contemporary life to conjure the complexities of women navigating public spaces and to draw attention to how our understanding of history is carried in the present.
One of the more unusual techniques included in the exhibition is reverse painting such as one completed in 1995 on the back of an acrylic sheet. A Feminine Tale is part of a series of works Singh created in the mid-1990s where she explores a solitary female figure often depicted nude, sitting cross-legged with a neutral expression as though contemplative. Vases or jars sit alongside cars, flowerpots, and a telephone. Two profile portraits face each other on either side of the central figure, with one reaching towards a mango. Letters and numbers fill the page, sometimes spelling out painted motifs such as ‘LAMP’, ‘TELEPHONE’, and ‘MANGO’. In the top left, adjacent to ‘MONDAY’, Singh lists numbers 1-9 leaving the viewer to imagine the significance of these numbers. Deviating from the floral borders of other works, Singh paints a border with abstract symbols on tantalising gold. Crosses and Xs populate the image and other paintings, a nod to Singh’s abstraction period, and symbolically rich in interpretive potential.
Also, on view in the exhibition are several large-scale cityscapes distinctive for their vibrant use of colour and intricate portrayals of locations. My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, painted in 2005, depicts a man and a woman, arm in arm, standing amongst clouds, aeroplanes, and a bull over a tangled street map populated with black jacketed men, buses, cars, and portrait busts of women. Street names and distinctive buildings emerge. Those familiar with New Delhi may recognise depictions of monuments such as the Red Fort, Humayun’s Tomb, and Jantar Mantar. Horoscope references are written out such as ‘GEMINI’, ‘TAURUS’, ‘SUN’, ‘MOON’ alongside ‘YOU ARE HERE’ orienting the viewer while ‘THIS MAP IS FAULTY DO NOT FOLLOW IT’ disorients. This is consistent with Singh’s approach to present discordant information.
Contrasting and often contradicting words and symbols convey Singh’s concern with meaning-making resting solely with the viewer. Remembering invites audiences to embrace Singh’s generous allowance for variation of meaning. Her oeuvre demonstrates a capacity for plurality or many truths and views sitting alongside each other.
Singh resists singular interpretation, explaining, ‘I know that when the work grows the starting point melts, references become signals to lead anybody or everybody to the desired place. I don’t remember myself, the frame breaks and I, the woman, stand there as anybody, as everybody.’
To coincide with the exhibition, Serpentine will release the most comprehensive publication in the last ten years on the artist. Designed by Mark El-khatib studio, it will bring together new and insightful contributions from Booker Prize winning author Geetanjali Shree, esteemed art historian Geeta Kapur, artist and friend Nilima Sheikh, curator and academic and Devika Singh. The catalogue will highlight Singh’s significant role in contemporary international art and her influence across generations and disciplines.
Remembering is curated by Tamsin Hong, Exhibitions Curator, Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator, with support from Richard Install, Head of Production and Zsuzsa Benke, Production Manager.
Arpita Singh (born 1937 in Baranagar, Bengal Presidency (now West Bengal); lives and works in New Delhi, India) is one of the pioneering post-independence era artists in India. Throughout her six-decade career the artist is committed to experimentation while creating a distinctive aesthetic style that brings together folk painting, weaving techniques, Indian mythology, city maps, Surrealism, and newspaper headlines. She is known for her expressive and multilayered works on canvas as well as her vivid watercolours. These are informed by Singh’s 1970-1980’s series of abstract ink drawings and etchings which are mostly black and white. Resisting singular interpretation, Singh’s works weave together unsettling historical events with observations of everyday life, and inner landscapes with labyrinthine cityscapes, thereby creating an omnipresent tension.
After graduating in Fine Arts from Delhi Polytechnic in 1959, Singh came together with fellow artists Nilima Sheikh, Nalini Malani, and Madhvi Parekh, to support each other in a largely male-dominated art scene and repeatedly exhibited together, shifting Indian contemporary art.
Singh’s work has been included in shows both in India and internationally, including a retrospective exhibition at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi in 2019, as well as group exhibitions at the Barbican, UK (2024); MK Gallery, UK (2023); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2022); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, US (2022); Mori Art Museum, Japan (2021); Centre Pompidou, France (2021); M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2021-2023); Lalit Kala Akademi, India (2014, 2013, 2011); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Spain (2013); Peabody Essex Museum, USA (2013); Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan (2012); National Gallery of Modern Art, India (2012); Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA), India (2011, 2010, 2008); Museum of Fine Arts, US (2009); Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (2007); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia (1993); Centre Pompidou, France (1986), and Royal Academy of Arts, UK (1982). She has also participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2022); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2021); Asia Society Triennial, USA (2020-21); Havana Biennial, Cuba (1986); and Triennale-India (1975, 1978). She was awarded a fellowship at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India in 2014. Singh was honoured with several awards, including the Padma Bhushan (2011); the Parishad Samman from the Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi (1991); and the Kalidas Samman, Bhopal (1991).
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