Pamela Singh

The images made by Pamela Singh explore feminine existence through the relationship between her own body and the social landscape, as both an insider and an outsider of contemporary Indian society.

In the early 1990s, Singh began her photographic career by honing her documentary skills. After attending Parsons School of Design, New York she attended the American College in Paris and later ICP, New York. Her photojournalistic work has been included in the pages of publications such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Sunday Times of London, and Paris Match. Her strong social depictions of Indian women in the military gained her international acclaim in the worldwide-traveling exhibition, India: A Celebration of Independence 1947-1997 (Aperture, 1997).

Singh began to weave influences from her own design projects involving textiles and jewelry into her own unique image crafting techniques. In her series, Fayum Heads (1994), she morphed photographs of her own face with painted depictions of ancient royals. In Tantric Self Portraits (2000-2003), she embellished the images with paint, gold-leafed symbols, and hieroglyphs. By integrating sacred patterning, Singh’s painted photographs update the traditional use of painting on images to a mode of spiritual exploration. The images are precariously balanced between contemporary reality and timeless tradition.

New York Times critic Roberta Smith observes, “These beautiful additions transform the images into deities … the results possess an entrancing nocturnal luminosity and combine the stylized naturalism of Indian miniatures with the symbolic geometry of Tantric art, while adding touches of contemporary self-awareness and humor.”

Informed by her earlier documentary style, Singh’s more recent works engage the viewer by exposing not only her physical self but also her own psyche in juxtaposition to her subjects, which often include community members, religious icons, animals and architecture. These images are arranged into diptychs, triptychs, and polyptychs that invoke psychological and spiritual narratives.

Singh’s work has been shown internationally, in Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance (Nottingham Contemporary), Divine Bodies (San Francisco Asian Art Museum), Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Whitechapel Gallery, London and at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland) and in Embellished Reality (Royal Ontario Museum of Art, Toronto, Canada). Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, The Art Complex Museum of Duxbury, The Daimler Contemporary in Germany, The University of North Carolina, Ackland Museum of Art as well as many private collections worldwide.

PAMELA SINGH

b. 1962, India

Pamela Singh’s photography-based practice explores feminine existence through the relationship between her own body and her social landscapes, as both an insider and outsider of contemporary Indian society.

She began her photographic career in the early 1990s as a photojournalist, reporting on social issues and civil wars in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and East and Central Africa for publications such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Sunday Times of London, and Paris Match. In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Singh’s practice took a more personal and decidedly spiritual turn as she began developing bodies of work focusing on self-portraiture and her own unique mixed-media image crafting techniques, influenced by Indian painting traditions and religious iconography.

Singh’s work has been shown internationally, most recently in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland; Triennial Bruges, Belgium; Spore Initiative, Germany; Photo Museum Antwerp, Belgium; Barbican Centre, UK; Design Museum, UK; Kunsthalle Emden, Germany; Manchester Museum, UK; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Philadelphia Museum of Art, US; and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, US. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, Art Complex Museum of Duxbury, Daimler Contemporary Berlin, University of North Carolina, Auckland Museum of Art as well as many private collections worldwide.

PAMELA SINGH

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