Artist Prarthna Singh is drawn first and foremost to the emotional power of human-centric stories. Based in Mumbai, India, she fully embodies her art practice in mind, body, and soul, investigating and unearthing intricate realms of femininity and politics in the country’s evolving cultural landscape. Energized by the courageous and artistic women who shaped her personal outlook from an early age, Singh went on to focus her inherent skills at the Rhode Island School of Design, earning a BFA in photography. Her captivating work illuminates a force of women who are breaking barriers, fighting for their freedom, and finding joy in acts of resilience. Demanding projects including “Champion,” documenting women training at sports camps in north-central states of India, “Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh,” participating in a community-based protest that lasted for a hundred days, and “2024: Notes from a Generation,” generating a multimedia endeavor alongside India’s youth, build on pure emotion. Each piece invokes the rage and heartbreak at hand, yet channels life-affirming love and care born from these spaces inhabited by women.
The artist shared with Whitewall ways to make a brighter impact, ensuring that the often-marginalized story is told—and that it’s done so in a manner that carries softness and a great deal of feeling.
Portrait courtesy of Prarthna Singh.
Prarthna Singh, “Champion,” 2015-ongoing, Interior of Jantar Mantar protest site during the wrestler’s protest. New Delhi, 2023.; © Prarthna Singh, Courtesy of the artist.
WHITEWALL: Can you describe your creative process and the elements of the craft that you find the most joy in?
PRARTHNA SINGH: For me personally, the story is always the foremost step of my creative process. If there is something that I feel passionately about, and often it has to do with women occupying spaces that have primarily been male-dominated, then I put all my energy and spirit into finding a way to pursue it. In my practice, and in life, I want to be surrounded by such powerful forces—women breaking barriers by living their truth, leading with love, and teaching us how to find joy in resilience.
“For me personally, the story is always the foremost step of my creative process,”
Prarthna Singh
I was lucky to be able to witness radical female solidarity firsthand at the Shaheen Bagh protest that began in a working-class Muslim neighborhood in New Delhi, in late 2019. A one-of its kind, women and children led movement that stood up to the passing of the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, directed towards our minorities. From my time at Shaheen Bagh was born my first self-published book Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh: One Hundred days of Resilience. Initially, I made my way to the protest as a citizen who wanted to show my support to the cause, but being able to bear witness to this hundred-day long fight to uphold our constitutional values was nothing short of life affirming!
Prarthna Singh Forms Human Connections Through Art
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh bookspread image; ‘Read and Resist’ a painting by artist Sameer Kulavoor, depicts the protest as viewed from the children’s perspective; © Prarthna Singh, Courtesy of the artist.
WW: What elements of human nature do you believe uniquely reveal themselves in photography?
PS: At the heart of my work lies the impulse for human connections. The desire to form bonds that go beyond image-making is inextricably linked to my practice. An essential part of my storytelling is looking for ways to distil the complexities of heartbreak and joy, while consciously working towards newer and more tender ways of utilising the medium as a tool for active engagement.
“The desire to form bonds that go beyond image-making is inextricably linked to my practice,”
Prarthna Singh
Within my practice, I feel more connected to anything that I’m doing, once there’s an emotion attached to it. While making Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh, for instance, often the emotion that emerged was anger, frustration and heartbreak. But when I was in the process of making the book, I consciously wanted to move away from these emotions and channel the love, warmth and individual acts of kindness that were the true essence of the space.
The fear of being stripped of your citizenship, making a highway your home for three months—it’s not easy or convenient. You’re leaving your everyday lives, families and jobs to sit in the middle of a road in the bitter, north-Indian winter. The conditions were harsh, as were the attacks by the state on its own citizens. Without erasing any of these emotions, I want to think of quieter ways to make an impact—to make sure that the story is taken forward—but in a manner that carries a certain tenderness with it.
Living and Creating in the World Today
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh bookspread image, The protest site; © Prarthna Singh, Courtesy of the artist.
WW: You have stated about your work in India, “As an artist, I believe it is my duty to chronicle the times we are living through.” What has this journey been like?
PS: It’s been gratifying, but not always easy. Living and creating in the world we occupy today, implicates all of us in its current state. It is impossible for me to remove myself from the oppression and injustices being carried out around me. My work is not created in silos. I am equally committed to my art as I am to upholding the truth.
“I am equally committed to my art as I am to upholding the truth,”
Prarthna Singh
When we think about our human experience, especially as artists, it often comes down to the relationships we have built in our time here. I think for me, that’s essential—in fact it’s crucial. It’s the building blocks of my work. All the women whose stories I have been lucky enough to share—whether it’s through a reportage commission or one that I chose to pursue on my own—I’m always returning back to this idea of relationships that live beyond my photographic exchange.
Champion is a long-term body of work where I photograph young women training to be wrestlers and boxers at sports camps in the north-central states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, a region with unfortunately high rates of female infanticide, child marriage and domestic violence. Within this daunting setting, these women are using sport as a way to change their destinies. They give us hope in a time where a toxic masculinity-fuelled political ideology, layered on to years of misogyny tightens its grip across India.
In 2023 thirty female wrestlers accused the head of the Wrestling Federation of India of sexual harassment. The same women I had photographed over the past decade were now sitting in protest. The same bodies that fought and won Olympic medals for the nation were now being used as a tool of resistance against state sponsored violence.
It was equally important for me to be able to document them at their strongest, while competing on the mat and training at camp, but also at their bravest yet most vulnerable, when they sat in protest in the sweltering heat in the capital city of New Delhi.
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh bookspread image, Portrait of a protestor made at on-site photo studio; © Prarthna Singh, Courtesy of the artist.
Prarthna Singh, “The Boxers,” image from the series Champion
2015-ongoing; © Prarthna Singh, Courtesy of the artist.
Portrait courtesy of Prarthna Singh.
