She will always be here

1967- 2020

Daughter of artists Arpita Singh and Paramjit Singh, Anjum Singh loses her battle with cancer

Gurnaaz Kaur

The year 2020 has been a year of losses. Young and progressive artist Anjum Singh left this world after six-and-a-half years of courageous battle with cancer. Daughter of artists Arpita Singh and Paramjit Singh, Anjum inherited creativity from her parents and followed it as her profession as well as passion.

In her oeuvre, she turned mundane objects and symbols to showcase her worry about growing materialism, urban consumerism, and environment degradation. Based in New Delhi, she did her BFA at Santiniketan, West Bengal in 1989. Then in 1991, she did MFA from College of Art, New Delhi. As a student at Santiniketan, she ventured into figurative motifs as she was highly influenced by Amrita Shergill.

A look at her paintings and you can see the artist had deep love for colours. In one of her interviews, she even expressed her fascination with bright hues. “It is very important to know your limitations. My problem is with colour. I am very comfortable using red and I know if something is not working, I can use red to make it work. I consciously restrict my palette sometimes, because that sense of adventure tends to fade away if you are overconfident.”

Pure colours were her first choice and use of white and black for mixing meant contamination. In time, she went on to acquire a degree in painting and printmaking from The Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC. That being her first time out of India, it opened a whole new world to her, which later translated into her flowing, experimental works.

In her last exhibition titled I am Still Here that was held in 2019, she turned inward to draw inspiration and it was her own body that become the muse. She played with the perspective of medicine. The intricate systems, currents, flows, exchanges as well as point of breakdown that occur within the internal realm were brought into view in the exhibition. She threw light on the broken parts of her body, on the process of objectification in medical treatment. There is an effort to make you stop and think beyond the visible.

She’s gone but will never be forgotten, through her art, she will live on forever…

Quotes

Girl with a vision

She was a young artist who had found her path. With a fresh thought, new vision she was out there to win the world. If her parents have a special place in the Indian contemporary art, this girl with her own light was taking it ahead to the world. She was doing very good work. My association is more with her parents and I know they were so disturbed when they found out about her illness. They did everything they could, even went to the US for her treatment. It is the most painful thing for a parent to lose their child. They must be so grieved. – Prem Singh

So dignified

She was an amazing girl. And had she not been stricken with cancer, she would have been an absolute frontline artist. I have seen her from her school days. She was beautiful in an unusual way. When she smiled her face lit up and her eyes sparkled. She was physically frail but converted that into a dignified strength. Her going away is deeply saddening.

Madan Gopal Singh