Noah Davis And Arpita Singh On Social Change

This spring, London pulses with two powerful exhibitions that demonstrate painting’s ability to challenge, provoke and inspire change. At the Barbican Gallery, the late American artist, Noah Davis’s first UK retrospective blends lush figuration with a fierce commitment to representation and community. Meanwhile at Serpentine North, Indian artist Arpita Singh’s long‑overdue UK solo show maps six decades of work, from folkloric dreamscapes to searing explorations of gender, violence and memory. Both artists insist that painting can shine the light on difficult truths, sparking conversations that resonate far beyond gallery walls.

Noah Davis’s premature death in 2015, at just 32, deprived the world of a singular talent whose work combined technical mastery with a profound empathy for everyday life. Now, a decade on, the Barbican is staging the UK’s first institutional retrospective of the Los Angeles artist, bringing together over fifty paintings, sculptures and works on paper.

Davis’s richly layered figurative scenes—informed by found photographs, film, literature and art history—capture moments of quiet wonder, joy and melancholy. Shanay Jhaveri, the Barbican’s head of visual arts, describes the show as both “a celebration of Davis’s legacy and a catalyst for dialogue around representation, identity and community.”

Central to Davis’s work was his passionate belief that as an artist his role was to reflect and uplift the people around him. In 2012 he and his wife, artist Karon Davis, founded the Underground Museum: four former storefronts repurposed into a free cultural centre in Arlington Heights, replete with a purple-flowered garden tribute to Prince. There he staged residencies and exhibitions, forging a groundbreaking three‑year partnership with MOCA Los Angeles to broaden access to its collection. All of which was motivated by the desire to, as he said, “change the way people view art, the way they buy art, the way they make art”.

Noah Davis at the Barbican is a stunning show and a rare opportunity to meet one of the most talented painters of our generation. There is a lot to see and so much to admire, yet among the exhibition’s highlights are 1975(8) (2013), Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque (2014) and The Missing Link 4 (2013). Jhaveri calls Davis one of the most original painters of our time. “Davis’s distinctive vision captures the nuances of life with poignancy and depth,” he says, “bridging personal and collective narratives in ways that profoundly connect with our times.”

Noah Davis is at the Barbican Art Gallery until May 11, 2025.

“What is a dreamlike, imaginative world to you is a real world for me,” wrote Arpita Singh. One of India’s leading contemporary artists, Singh (born 1937 in Baranagar) is renowned for her bold, figurative paintings—a distinct visual language rich in color, iconographic depth, and deep narrative. Hers is a practice of bold experimentation—an ever-evolving artist who explores color and mark-making, using figuration to navigate emotional responses to social upheaval and global crises.

Remembering at Serpentine North gallery marks Singh’s first solo exhibition outside India. Curated by Tamsin Hong and featuring 165 works, it explores the full breadth of her practice, from large-scale oil paintings to more intimate watercolors and ink drawings.

The project largely came to life thanks to Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine’s artistic director, who spotted and fell in love with one of her paintings in last year’s The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998 at the Barbican in London. He says, “Through a practice that blends Bengali folk art with modernist explorations of identity, Singh vividly portrays scenes of life and imagination, stories, and symbols, uniting the personal and the universal.”

Singh’s early work weaves mythology and folklore, incorporating recurring symbols (flowers, turtles, cars, mangoes…) and often featuring borders, sometimes floral, in the style of Indian miniatures. To my mind, her earlier canvases evoke the work of Marc Chagall, the Russian-born French artist who also blurred the boundaries between dreams and reality, layering rich color and poetic imagery to create magical worlds where folklore, faith, fantasy all intertwine, and where his luminous canvases depict poignant emotions of loss and exile.

Over the last two decades, Singh’s work has become increasingly political, addressing hard-hitting themes of gender, motherhood, violence and vulnerability as she engages with the psychological impact of local, national and global events on women. The Serpentine show concludes with what I feel are her most powerful works: My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising (2005), My Lily Pond (2009), and Searching Sita Through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels (2015). These large-scale paintings best reflect Singh’s unforgettable visual language—layered, text-rich, and deeply narrative.

Says Singh of the exhibition: “Remembering draws from old memories from which these works emerged. Whether I am aware or not, there is something happening at my core. It is how my life flows.”

Remembering is at Serpentine North until July 27, 2025.

Read my 2024 year in art, and see why the 24th Triennale Milano has chosen the theme “Inequalities” to direct this edition’s vision. For more articles on art and design, visit my page here.