Arpita Singha Lopa: Tracing Emotions Through Graphic Narratives

Arpita Singha Lopa is a Dhaka-based emerging visual artist who intricately combines text with images and continues to explore new frontiers in contemporary art. She was born on May 15, 1986, in Kishoreganj. She has developed a visual vocabulary through years of training and participation in national and international platforms. Her academic journey commenced with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Dhaka, where she completed her Master of Fine Arts in 2011.

Performance art, sound art, and conceptual art are part of graphic art in Lopa's embrace. She has been active in a number of exhibitions and workshops in Bangladesh and India. Some of these were the 17th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh, organized by Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, and KIPAF 16 – Kolkata International Performance Art Festival 2016. Besides, she took part in documenta fifteen, Germany'22, Jakarta Biennale, Indonesian"24, Bengal Biennale, Santiniketan & Kolkata, India'24 as a part of Britto Arts Trust. With vivid experiences from diverse walks of life, she has continued nurturing her ever-growing voice as an artist.

Besides these exhibitions, she has ventured into performative and sound-based practices through the Sound Making Workshop at Shilpakala Academy, the National Performance Art Festival 2017, and the Performance Art Weekend organized by the Bengal Foundation. These spaces provided her with the opportunity to go beyond the visual and into the realms of embodiment, sound, and space as an expression of her psyche.

Lopa's art-making processes are profoundly personal, often pulling from deeply felt moments and shared tragedies. One of the most striking fractures in her practice emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when isolation and uncertainty governed daily life. It was during this period that she started to have an artistic conversation with the ubiquitous city crow—a metaphorical observer and actor of urban solitude and stifled yearnings—which, in so many ways, is a counterpart to urban loneliness. With these works, Lopa set forth a spectrum of emotions and needs that were both deeply personal and collective.

This is the way her work continues to transform, documenting ever-changing landscapes of unarticulated feelings, volatile grudges, or deeply contemplating observations. Arpita Singha Lopa is regarded as one of the promising contemporary Bangladeshi artists, intertwining personal stories with universal narratives.

Concept Note for the Art on Her Own Words

Life is a long journey, and we have to experience a lot of things and unexpected situations. There are many desires from birth to death. That demand drives people constantly over time. I have expressed some of my life needs and some unspoken feelings through my pictures taken during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 with the city bird CROW.