As the Western world reels from the effects of the mass migration from Africa and the Middle East and the media is full of harrowing stories of innumerable human tragedies, Girjesh Kumar Singh’s compelling sculptures made from broken bricks of destroyed homes provide a perfect artistic testimony to the traumas we are living with in our contemporary societies. The artist’s practice manages to combine the poetics of destruction with something human and historical, transforming the inanimate into the visceral, and bringing to light difficult truths which are too often suppressed or ignored by those unaffected.
His works features large scale groups of figures carved out of broken bricks from demolished walls which the artist collects from his hometown Uttar Pradesh and from other cities in India, that highlights Kumar Singh’s interest in destroyed building sites and their legacy.
A social and humanitarian artist rather than a political one, Singh is interested in the history of his materials, in both a literal sense that deals not only with actual past events and architectural structures, but also in the implied human narratives that established them. By reintroducing a human element to these objects, the artist reminds us that the meaning of buildings, their homeliness and utility, can only exist through social interpretation. Furthermore, by asking us to consider the lives of the people who might once have inhabited them, he also poses inevitably emotionally charged questions about current human situations; ‘where people might be, and what has become of their lives.’.
Girjesh Kumar Singh was born in 1981. Girjesh is from Uttar Pradesh and lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat. Singh studied Literature, Economics and Philosophy Benares and then finished his MFA in Sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University. Girjesh has participated in a number of group shows across India including The Lalit Kala Academy, The Strand Art Room. Girjesh’s works have been acquired by major corporate and private collectors in India, Singapore and the US.