Rakhi Sarkar brought yellow flowers and Aprita Singh preserved them for posterity in a pen-and-ink drawing on paper in 2008. In 2014, Singh conserved other instances to physical memory, such as the man ‘scratching own back’ whom she drew in another pen-and-ink drawing. Also recorded for history the same year were ‘a man with a cup,’ a ‘paper woman,’ a ‘paper bird’ and some others. All of these, and many more, are on view in an exhibition of works on paper by Arpita Singh at Vadehra Art Gallery in Defence Colony, New Delhi. Some of these are rumination of an artist who gives in to the urge of doodling, some are more than just that — a comment on the society and its slowly unfolding metamorphosis. However, all of these, according to Singh, were doodles that she created just about anywhere and anytime. “I didn’t believe they could be of value to anybody and I also wasn’t sure if this drawing show was possible,” she adds. But gallerist Arun Vadehra thought otherwise, she informs, and her first solo show dedicated to only her drawings and sketches was born. “One doesn’t carry a sketch book all the time, but then one also feels like drawing,” smiles Singh at an interaction with Blouin Artinfo at the gallery. “So, you end up drawing on whatever piece of paper you can lay your hands on — invitation card, newspaper, etc. As I’m not a highly organised person, most of it is lost and some is cleared away by the maid the next morning!”Even if Singh has lost quite a bit of her doodles, the ones that have been preserved and structured together to form the present exhibition, present a deep insight into the thought processes that make up her practise. To begin with, the fact that the works have a certain intimate quality — because they are created in those moments when an artist is simply playing with the urge to draw and not necessarily to create a canvas for an exhibition or a buyer — make it a rather ‘personal’ exhibition. “Looking at this show, I felt like my personal diary was being opened up,” she says. The book brought out by the gallery to accompany the exhibition, too bears that sentiment. It opens with another doodle where Singh has scribbled, ‘this book belongs to me (now).’ The works date from 1990s to 2015.The works, mostly in black ink on paper but also some larger ones that bear colour, depict a broad range of reflections — from studies of men in various situations such as standing, sitting, to human figures placed in other circumstances. Whatever the subject of the drawing, the most striking thing is that all human figures — whether men or women — are real with warts, moles, sagging-misshapen bodies, wrinkles, worn-out spines and contorted faces (Singh had once famously said that she didn’t paint glamorous women as they belonged to cinema). This writer’s favorite is the 2013 drawing, “Storyteller.” There’s a storyteller and there’s an eager listener, the latter’s body language expressing the rapt attention with which he is ostensibly listening to a story. The background is enriched with text, jumbled letters, packed together between thin lines, instantly giving an idea of a rich story floating in the air. Other minor details, such as a bird about to take a flight, another pecking on crumbs on the ground, a boat in the background appearing like a character from the story being told, complete the picture. The insertion of text in many of her sketches is an added dimension to Singh’s work, which adds profound layers to the drawings. In an interview with curator and art critic Gayatri Sinha, reproduced in the book, Singh responds to a question on the way text is “carefully articulated” in some of the drawings: “Maybe, I wanted to convey that the information about the figure is received from the media, the newspaper; it bears the marks of cutting, crushing, the flatness of paper. Moreover, when we were in college, most of us had no money for sketchbooks. I used magazines and drew over the printed text. That memory came back. Maybe that is how the printed elements were used.”Besides the text, maps, directions, landmarks and other cartographic elements too appear in some of her drawings. That owes to Singh’s personal interest in old maps, which she collects in reproductions. She views them as memories of migration that humans have undertaken at great risks throughout history, breaching boundaries by braving dangers far beyond present-day imagination. Singh, 78, is India’s most valued woman artist in terms of auction price — her monumental, 16-panel canvas “Wish Dream” remains the most expensive work by an Indian woman sold at $2.24 million (approx. Rs 9.6 crore then), a figure achieved at an online auction by Saffronart in 2010. It leads to a discussion on the presence of very few women artists in the list of top artists of all time, and how, the world over, they face hurdles in their work mostly because they are women. “Sometimes, the hurdles emanate from the personal space of the women artists. I was lucky that my husband [Paramjit Singh] is also a painter. So, he understood my need for space, both physical and mental. I had a more regular life after my daughter [Anjum, also a painter] was born and when she went to school, I used my time well. I didn’t entertain family, relatives... you have to be firm if you want to have a place of your own where you can sit and think. I think, in that sense, not much has changed for women. Like the American poet Sylvia Plath who once said, ‘Why am I making morning tea while he is reading the newspaper?’ That’s why I’ve been lucky, Paramjit has shared everything that I’ve had to do at home...” she trails off.The strong sense of personal independence that Singh has lived with throughout, and the tag of the ‘most valued Indian woman artist’ haven’t, fortunately, coupled to give her an intimidating aura that is so well-cultivated and sported by so many of her younger peers. She talks freely, so freely that she puts people around her at ease, moving from the topics of drawing, women empowerment, and the absent maid at home with as much fluidity as her strokes on the canvas are. When I ask her about “Wish Dream” and if it changed her life in some way, Singh says. “It hasn’t made any difference. However, things have changed a lot. Earlier, there was no market, but today the market has at least helped improve the lives of artists. I was happy earlier, I’m happy now,” she says. However, she does point out the difference that has come in the way the art fraternity bonds with itself. “I’m sure they [the younger generation of artists] are happy with the way they connect with each other but things were different when we were younger. Compared to the way we hung around with each other, present-day relations seem so formal. In our times, all of us would meet almost every evening, it would go late into the night and would end up with two artists engaging in fist fight. And at 2 am, you could see the same two artists going back home together on a motorcycle,” she shares with a hearty laugh.The ease of having a conversation with Arpita Singh, perhaps, is one of the biggest reasons why one should know her as an artist, as an individual. Her drawings, or ‘personal diary,’ make a good starting point.—The exhibition is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-40, Defence Colony, New Delhi, through December 2, 11 am to 7 pm (Sunday closed)Follow@ARTINFOIndia
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