Indian Artist Arpita Singh’s vast and multifaceted body of work – now distilled into the Serpentine London show, Remembering (from 20 March – 27 July 2025) – stands as a lesson for young artists to keep on challenging existing narratives, rethinking history and redefining how we see the present.
Arpita Singh can undoubtedly be considered a national treasure: regarded amongst India’s most influential painters, she is known for her colourful and richly detailed work ranging from paintings and drawings, to sketches and watercolours. Inspired by her domestic world, the folk art and traditional visual codes of India, her work has always stood out for its effortless blend of surrealism and figuration. Reinterpreting mythological symbols in a modern context, Singh has, over the years, explored a range of social themes across gender identify and power imbalance, motherhood and political violence across her paintings.
Now, after an extensive six-decade career, her art is being presented in a solo institutional exhibition outside India. Remembering, on view at Serpentine North Gallery in London encapsulates the essence of Singh’s practice. With 165 works on display, the exhibition reflects themes of memories, experiences, and collective histories. Each work has been carefully selected in collaboration with the artist, showcasing everything from large-scale oil paintings to intimate watercolours and ink drawings.
“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,” say Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine. “We first encountered her work during research for the 2008/2009 exhibition Indian Highway at Serpentine South.”
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Deep Roots
Born in 1937 in what is now Bangladesh, Singh moved to India with her mother and brother in 1946, a year before the country gained independence from the British. She studied fine arts at Delhi Polytechnic and later worked as a textile designer at the Weaver’s Service Centre where she collaborated closely with artisans. This experience left a lasting impact on her artistic practice.
Throughout her career, Singh’s paintings have had an almost fever-dream quality – lucid yet mesmerising, disorientating yet captivating. At a time when the art world was largely male-dominated, she, alongside fellow artists Nilima Sheikh, Nalini Malani, and Madhvi Parekh, played a pivotal role in shifting the landscape of contemporary Indian art. Her first exhibition was held at the Kunika Chemould Gallery in New Delhi in 1972, organised by Roshan Alkazi. Since then, she has participated in group shows staged at prestigious institutions, including the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1982), the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1986), and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1993), among many others.
In 2011, Singh was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honours, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the arts.
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Remembering: The Exhibition
Celebrating this visionary Indian artist and her relentless experimentation with colour and form, Remembering at Serpentine London offers an in-depth look at Singh’s six-decade-long career. The exhibition showcases her explorations of abstraction through pen, ink, and pastels, as well as her bold use of surrealism, Indian Court painting traditions, and powerful depictions of women.
Across her rich canvases, tones of pinks, striking blues, and deep, earthy reds work as emotional markers, portraying themes of nostalgia, loss, and joy; her characters exude a captivating stillness. Some of her most famous works on show include Devi Pistol Wali, showcasing a Hindu goddess in a white sari and standing on the body of a man; Feminine Tale depicting a female sitting cross-legged, with a contemplative look; My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising displaying a man and a woman watching over a chaotic landscape of people, aeroplanes and buses; and Buy Two Get Two Free which showcases two women (one nude) being photographed by men.
A recurring theme in Singh’s work is memory – of the partition riots she witnessed in her childhood, the places she has travelled to, and the people whose stories she has absorbed. “I believe you inherit certain memories. They are not just from your own lifetime but passed down from your parents, who inherited them from theirs,” she says. “It’s not the experiences themselves but the essence of these experiences that leave an impression on you and constantly resurface. I’m always searching for these inherited memories.”
Words also play an important role in her paintings, with phrases like “legend” and “mango”, as well as numbers, appearing on her canvases. “When I was very young and had just graduated from art college, I had no money to buy a sketchbook. Instead, I gathered discarded exhibition catalogues, which were filled with printed text. I used to draw on them, and over time, I realised that the printed matter was becoming part of my drawings. That’s how text and script found their way into my work,” she explains.
A Lasting Legacy
Alongside the exhibition, Serpentine will release the most extensive publication on Singh to date. Featuring contributions from esteemed voices such as Geetanjali Shree, Geeta Kapur, and Nikita Gill, the catalogue – designed by Mark El-Khatib Studio – will serve as a tribute to Singh’s enduring influence on contemporary art across generations.
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Remembering is on view at Serpentine North, London, from 20 March – 27 July 2025. Click here for more information.
