Drawing Room: Ritika Aurora loves how Arpita Singh uses pink
With vivid pinks and a hint of irony, Arpita Singh shows how disorienting the world can be for women pushed to the margins
Arpita Singh’s vibrant, vivid oil paintings often focus on female figures traversing the vagaries of age and the weight of societal expectations. She uses bright colours and packs her visuals together to cover every inch of her canvas, taking inspiration from Indian miniature. This is in stark contrast to the Western concept of showcasing depth through perspective and the strategic placement of figures. And yet, Western abstractionist movements such as Surrealism are also evident in her work.
It’s probably what makes Singh one of India’s foremost female modernists. She was born in undivided Bengal in 1937, and at age 87, is currently showing her first solo institutional exhibition outside India. The show, Remembering, at London’s Serpentine North gallery, features works that span more than six decades.
The painting I find fascinating is her 2019 work, Is There Any Other Way To Return Home. In it, two women attempt to cross a road covered in convoluted symbols and daunting instructions. The women’s sense of confusion is palpable. One covers her face, clearly unable to find the right path, even as the other consoles her. The road and surroundings are awash in bright pinks, while the two figures are clad in drab colours, as if to highlight how out of place they are.
Look at it as a whole and the work starts to become a moment that explores loss and endurance, particularly the kind women experience during forced displacement and migration. There’s disorientation, but also resilience, both central to women caught in the margins of history and memory.
Singh’s use of the colour pink appeals to me as I use it in my own work to signify celebratory femininity. Here though, it is used with a sense of irony. These are women fleeing their home or circumstances, in the midst of war or some sort of unrest. The confusion etched into the scene reflects the larger questions of identity and what constitutes the idea of home. The problem may appear minor at first glance, but it touches upon grave socio-political realities as well as the artist’s spiritual longing for rootedness.
Most of her work uses traditional Indian art forms, many also incorporate letters, numbers and text as a nod to little cultural details. In Devi Pistol Wali (1990) one of her famous works, the female figure, dressed in widow’s weeds channels Goddess Kali with her multiple hands. Two hands secure her sari over her head, others hold a mango, a potted plant. And one holds a pistol, aimed at a man wielding a sword and shield. Another Singh work, My Mother, was made in 1993, just as India’s economic reforms were coming to effect. It shows an older woman, her expression disapproving as the paraphernalia of a consumerist nation piles up and cascades on the other side of the canvas.
I am particularly drawn to the dichotomy between order and chaos, playfulness and pain in Singh’s art. We can all relate to the need for making unpleasant choices. Women are often left to their own devices to find their way ‘home’. Singh’s work captures this sentiment so well.
Artist bio: Ritika Aurora’s art focuses on the emotions, ambitions and dreams of women. Her work, inspired by the art nouveau and abstract movements, is opulent and contains a wealth of detail.
Ritika Aurora spoke to Noor Anand Chawla
From HT Brunch, May 31, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
