Alpana Vij

b. 1969, Singapore/India

Alpana Vij is a Singapore based contemporary artist. Her practice employs painting, found objects, photography and video to explore themes of perception and what constitutes ‘objective reality’. She is inspired by the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā or emptiness that focuses on the transitory and ephemeral nature and interconnectedness of all phenomena. She seeks to use her ritualized and meditative art-making as a reflexive process to question and understand these teachings and to create immersive experiences that poetically engage the viewer in a dialogue.

Alpana’s explores through her works, which she said that the idea is compactly changing, and how life is ephemeral and interconnected at the same time. Every piece of her artworks has a whole story that underlies it, that each piece is a result of things in nature that had come together in order to give birth to it. But the truth is that in the past life it was also once beautiful and has lived a full life. Alpana gets her influence by the Japanese idea of kintsugi, which celebrates the imperfections in ceramics because these scars bear witness to the passage of time. “Things change, and that’s the one thing that we can be sure of- not to sound morbid, but life is short and we should enjoy it,” said Alpana.

Alpana graduated with a BFA from College of Art, New Delhi and received a MAFA from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. She is also deeply involved in bringing art to the community and has initiated and participated in various projects in Singapore and India. Alpana has shown her works at several solo and group shows. Her works are in private collections in Singapore, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and India.