SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Artist Shali­ni Singh will present her 11th so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion, Joy by Shali­ni Singh, at Arn­im’s Art Gal­le­ria’s Wood­brook branch from May 2-15.

The col­lec­tion ex­plores the con­cept of joy as a pro­found, en­dur­ing state of be­ing. Rather than por­tray­ing fleet­ing mo­ments of hap­pi­ness, it delves in­to joy as a deep­er, more sus­tain­able pres­ence; some­thing root­ed in in­ner peace and a sense of mean­ing.

Joy, in this con­text, is not sim­ply a re­ac­tion to ex­ter­nal events, but a cul­ti­vat­ed state that emerges from re­silience, mind­ful­ness, and emo­tion­al clar­i­ty.

Ex­pe­ri­ences along this jour­ney be­come vi­su­al nar­ra­tives. Each piece be­comes a chap­ter in a larg­er sto­ry; trac­ing mo­ments of still­ness, strength in ad­ver­si­ty, and the qui­et per­sis­tence of hope. The paint­ings are med­i­ta­tive re­flec­tions, cap­tur­ing the essence of joy not as an es­cape from life’s dif­fi­cul­ties, but as a pow­er­ful re­sponse to them. Through the in­ter­play of form, colour, scale and tex­ture, the work in­vites the view­er to wit­ness trans­for­ma­tion and heal­ing.

The works tran­scend sur­face aes­thet­ics to em­body a sense of calm and clar­i­ty. Through ex­pres­sion­ism, colour and in­ten­tion­al space, the art cre­ates a med­i­ta­tive at­mos­phere; en­cour­ag­ing a mo­ment of pause and re­flec­tion. This in­ward gaze be­comes a prac­tice in it­self, re­veal­ing that joy may not be some­thing we chase, but some­thing we al­low our­selves to re­turn to.

Singh, a grad­u­ate of UWI, St Au­gus­tine, with BA DipEd, MPhil and PhD de­grees, has been a sec­ondary school teacher for 24 years and part-time lec­tur­er at UWI and UTT.

She is not­ed for be­ing in­spired by ce­les­tial and cos­mic el­e­ments, the un­known ter­ri­to­ry, the un­seen, an­cient mythol­o­gy, sym­bols, arte­facts, rit­u­als, cave draw­ings, trib­al com­mu­ni­ties and mon­u­men­tal works of civ­i­liza­tions for­got­ten, lost or record­ed.

Her unique com­po­si­tions in­cor­po­rate un­con­ven­tion­al ma­te­ri­als such as eye dust, liq­uid pa­per, glit­ter glue, aerosol spray paints, lip­stick, chalk, crayons, and la­tex paint.

The ex­hi­bi­tion opens on May 2 from 6 pm to 9 pm and will con­tin­ue Mon­day to Fri­day from 9 am to 6 pm and on Sat­ur­day from 9 am to 4 pm. There will be an artist read­ing on May 3 from 1 pm to 3 pm.