33 Link Road
Singh’s work often renders familiar form into insubstantial mirages, challenging its solidity and by extension the fixity of meaning and the intimacy of knowing that it symbolizes. She transforms form into illusions, perceptual hiccups or ethereal surfaces of lace and thread which appear to levitate like embroideries on air.
For this exhibition, viewers are invited to walk through a labyrinthine space of staggered, veil-like architectural facades based on specific places of emotional resonance for the artist. Made in white thread, these skeletal membranes feature life-size, embroidered architectural fragments from various homes Singh has lived in, particularly 33 Link Road – the family home built in Delhi soon after partition, when her grandparents migrated from Pakistan to India.
Singh lived in several states and countries but the idea of home was continually tethered to this one address (stated as the permanent address in all official documents until a few years ago). A site of gathering, story-telling, embroidering and knitting in the sun, family weddings and sleepovers, a room at the back where her mother was born and a room in the front where her grandfather died – this home, a container of potent memories, now lies unoccupied.
Addressing the temporal nature of both – the form and the meaning of ‘home’, the gallery transforms into an ethereal installation of transparent windows, doors, hinges, gates, staircases and brick walls, overlapping to evoke resonances, contradictions, harmonies and dissonances from certain vantage points while offering clear openings into the spaces behind from other viewing positions. Hard architectural form transforms into soft, tactile skins and the language of memory finds resonance in these veil-like, white surfaces; flattened as if preserved within the pages of book.
2023:
Exhibit 320, Delhi, India
CSMVS museum, Mumbai, India
KNMA (Kiran Nadar Museum of Art), Noida, India
2022:
Asia Pacific Triennial QAGOMA
2021:
Aicon Contemporary, New York & 1X1 Art Gallery, Dubai
2020:
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi
2019:
Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
Hermès, The Chanakya, New Delhi
2019-current:
Architectural Thread Drawings
2018:
Wilfrid Israel Museum, Israel
Belgrade Biennale/ 58th October Salon, Serbia
2017:
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
India Art Fair/ FOCUS
C24 Gallery, New York, USA
2016:
Exhibit 320, New Delhi, India
Saatchi Gallery, London, UK & Art Houz, Chennai, India
2015-current:
Botanical Thread Drawings & Vitrines