Artist Anjum Singh, known for her depictions of urban ecology, passes away at 53

Delhi-based artist Anjum Singh, known for her works which tackled the themes of urban ecology and environmental degradation, passed away at the age of 53 on 17 November. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. Singh is the daughter of artists Arpita and Paramjit Singh. She  received training at Santiniketan’s Kala Bhawan, where she was heavily influenced by Amrita Sher-Gill. She went on to get a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Delhi University, and learnt painting and print-making at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC. Singh’s work was displayed at solo shows in India as well as Singapore and the US, and was featured in group shows in Melbourne and London, among other locations. She was awarded a residency by London’s Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship in 2002-03, and won an honour at the Sahitya Kala Parishad’s sixth Yuva Mahotsava in 1991. Her last exhibition, titled I am still here, was held in 2019 and featured works in oil and mixed media which she made in 2015-16. This outing was autobiographical in nature, with the artist turning her gaze on her own body. “The show is an act of reconfiguring a disembodied entity; returning it to a state of fractured wholeness,” wrote Rosalyn D’Mello of the exhibition. “Ms Singh, who lives in New Delhi, has said that her paintings reflect the world immediately around her. This may account for her images of entangling systems — honeycombs, tubes — that are half-organic, half-mechanized,” reads a review of her 2002 New York solo debut, published in the New York Times.