Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
Memory has always been a narrative thread in Arpita Singh’s art, but as she approaches her 88th birthday this June, it’s perhaps unsurprising that she revisits this theme yet again. Now, a new exhibition at Serpentine Gallery in London traces Singh’s 60-year career, unearthing the many memories associated with each of its 165 featured works.
As her first institutional solo exhibition outside of India, Arpita Singh: Remembering proves to be an exceptional journey both into the artist’s vision and her range, cataloging everything from paintings, acrylics, and watercolors to ink drawings and etchings. Equally diverse are Singh’s stylistic underpinnings, which span abstraction, surrealism, figuration, and elements derived from Indian court paintings and folk narratives. Though distinct in form and genre, each artwork is grounded in memory, both personal and collective.
Singh’s 1990 painting Devi Pistol Wali, for instance, depicts the many-armed Hindu goddess Devi, her feet firmly planted atop a man’s body. As two of her hands adjust the sari over her head, she holds a pistol in another, aimed at a man gripping what appears to be a sword and shield. Her other hands are wrapped around a vase of flowers and a mango, recalling images of abundance, growth, and fecundity. The entire canvas is wrapped with a border of flowers—a common feature of Indian miniatures—and presents a scene of resilience and even rebellion, repurposing mythic traditions to account for contemporary life.
“[The painting] is demonstrative of Singh’s utilization of Indian myths and folk stories to conjure the complexities of women navigating public spaces and to draw attention to how our understanding of history is carried in the present,” Serpentine’s exhibition text reads.
My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, from 2005, also unites with history and memory. The composition is sprawling: a man and a woman, arms linked, overlook a tangled street map, replete with countless men, buses, and historic monuments. Above the pair is a flurry of airplanes, alongside pink clouds and a bull marked with a “Taurus” label. From afar, My Lollipop City resembles New Delhi with its inclusion of landmarks like the Red Fort and Jantar Mantar, but with an added sense of disorientation and confusion. It’s as though time has eroded a precise memory of the city, allowing for greater experimentation and ambiguity.
“I think everybody has an [endless storage of memory] and I’m very fond of opening it and bringing things out,” Singh told curator and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist in a 2024 interview. “I think it comes naturally to everybody.”
This philosophy is part of what makes Singh’s artwork so compelling. They’re not simply reproductions of her or a community’s memory, but a remix, one that is also closely aligned with history.
“Remembering draws from old memories from which these works emerged,” Singh said in a statement. “Whether I am aware or not, there is something happening at my core. It is how my life flows.”
Arpita Singh: Remembering is currently on view at Serpentine through July 27, 2025.
Now open at Serpentine’s London gallery, Arpita Singh Remembering chronicles the Indian artist’s 60-year career across 165 artworks.
Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
“Devi Pistol Wali,” 1990. (Courtesy of Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, India)
“The Tamarind Tree,” 2022. (Courtesy of Vadehra Family Collection)
Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
Artworks span everything from watercolors and paintings to ink drawings and etchings, each exploring the function of memory and history.
Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
“My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising,” 2005. (Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery)
“Lesser Myth,” 2006. (Courtesy of Vadehra Family Collection)
Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
“A Feminine Tale,” 1995. (Courtesy of Taimur Hassan Collection)
Arpita Singh: Remembering is currently on view until July 27, 2025.
“Buy Two, Get Two Free,” 2007. (Private Collection)
Installation view of “Remembering” at Serpentine Gallery. (Photo: Jo Underhill)
