Viewing Arpita Singh at Serpentine North Gallery

At 87, Arpita Singh is long overdue her first solo exhibition outside of her native India, and it comes at last in this major staging at Serpentine’s spectacular North Gallery. In a painting career that has spanned six decades, during which Singh has created non-stop, there was ample choice for what to show: this exhibition works chronologically and like a retrospective, moving from her earliest oil and charcoal works to more recent watercolour paintings.

Singh’s paintings have dabbled in various genres, and often return to Bengali folk art and Indian myths and stories, weaving into these ancient collective tales her own personal perspectives on the conflicts and chaos of her lifetime. The exhibition also positions Singh’s work in connection to feminism and her consistent focus on female agency, and themes including motherhood, ageing, female sexuality, resistance and violence.

Singh’s slightly surreal works with their shimmering palettes and delicate details rendered in sketchy, intuitive lines are also expressions of a deep inner world. As Singh herself says of the exhibition: “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.”