Arpita Singh’s canvas is a world of received experiences. Where the ordinary cohabits with the extraordinary. In a playground that becomes a battlefield, images of conflict appear and reappear, reflecting a very real consciousness of fear beneath layers of floating, childlike images and seemingly innocuous situations. Her battlefield is the mind, the home and the street. How do we deal with the assault on our senses each day? How do we deal with the ubiquitous violence lurking in our lives?

Arpita’s imaging of the Child Bride, 1985, remains a poignant reminder of a situation both real to the Indian tradition and yet fantasised. This may be one of her earliest paintings to project the figure naked, of a girl who is yet a child, her nakedness dramatised by the yellow veil encasing her little body. There is no polemical comment; there are only signs of turbulence, of the sanctity of a person being violated. It is through this seamless shift between reality and a coded language of symbols that Arpita makes her statements.