Brooks We met late last year in Miami, after I saw your work at Untitled. You were presenting with Victoria Miro, and I saw these beautiful paintings and I thought who made these? I need to meet him.  And there you were.

Singh Yes, exactly.

Brooks Was that the first time you’ve shown in Miami?

Singh Yes. That was my first time even visiting Miami. I had wanted to go to Miami for the art fairs, but I never felt the urge, and I think this time the time was right because not only was I showing work, but I really wanted to go. Things were tight at that time, in terms of deadlines and other things going on, so I gave myself precisely two and a half days in Miami,  three days including the travel.

Brooks Travel from New York, where you live.

Singh Yes, in Brooklyn.

Brooks How long have you been in New York?

Singh Officially since the summer of 2016. It has been ten years now, but I spent the last three years in Seattle, so we should say seven years in New York.

Brooks And before New York you were in Delhi?

Singh No, I came from grad school. I was supposed to go to London for grad school, but my funding didn't work out from the institution and then in desperation I applied to one and only one program in the US. I had no clue about American universities, to be really honest. I applied for the University of Iowa's interdisciplinary program. I had met some people and they knew about the writing program and told me to apply. I got full funding, and that was the only reason I moved to the US.

Brooks Wonderful.

Singh Yeah, and it was a three year fully paid program. The program was very fascinating because I was able to really tap into my interdisciplinary skills of being a draftsman, being a painter, and being a trained dancer. But when I came to the University of Iowa it was fascinating polishing my writing skills, working on intermedia classes, taking a lot of collaborative production classes, improv dance. All these classes really helped me connect my components, because in India when I was studying Indian classical dance, I was trying to bring those elements into my work. Those works, when I look back, were very strong works, and I am now bringing them back for my next project; it’s a full circle. Iowa City was an important time and place because it allowed me to really experiment, and people were very supportive, very collaborative. And, also being a true university town, it was a big party school. {laughs} I had a lovely roommate. I had very interesting South Asian friends. I was able to eventually take film as my minor; I saw film-making as one subject where painting, drawing, dance, and movement kind of all came together from the theatrical simulacrums. By the time I was in second year of my college I got into Skowhegan, so I did that during my three year MFA program, and when I graduated I got into the Bemis residency in Nebraska. After that, being an international student, I was trying to decide if I should move to L.A. or the East Coast, but since I don't drive, I chose New York.

Brooks As someone who lives in L.A., I can assure you that it is probably better to live in New York if you don’t know how to drive, although I do know people here who don't drive. But it's very difficult or very expensive.

Singh Yes, you have to manage things accordingly and be prepared with your time if you don’t have a car in such a place.

Brooks Of course, you have to do that in New York as well, but the infrastructure is set up in a way that makes it so much more manageable.

Singh In my early days, when I just moved to the city, I ended up using the Subway as a spot or as a place to think; I would keep tiny sketchbooks. I don't do that anymore. I want to start doing that again, after having spent the last three years being in Seattle, now that I am back again in New York, which is home. I want to start drawing in the subway again, or to read, moving from point A to point B, between museums, or try to build collaborative relationships. Subway time used to be the time where I could take a nap, sort of not think, or just do doodles in the sketchbooks, and I really like that idea. From Brooklyn, fifty-five minutes is standard, really, to get to a museum like the Met in Manhattan.  By this direct train which I have next door, I use that time just to let go, to not think. It's like a decompressing time, which is very fascinating because I used to do this in Delhi, where I also lived very close to a subway station. Sometimes I would take private cars, because that is still affordable in India. I like that idea of traversing from point A to point B in a city; sometimes you can't think in a certain way when you are in a studio or at home, and being driven, sitting behind the driver, can help you think. I love it.

Brooks I understand that. When I lived in London, I took public transport everywhere and I used that time to look around, of course, but I also read a lot and thought a lot. There is something particular about being in that kind of a liminal space, a space that is between other spaces or in between activities; you are in motion, but you're not in control, which is very different than having to focus on driving.

Singh Yeah, very true.

Brooks You really are quite a multidisciplinary artist. I was aware of your visual work and your dance, but I didn't know about the writing.

Singh It's very sporadic, it's very baroque writing. I'm not a writer, I always tell people. I can write, but I take forever to finish something, but I don’t really write. I'm actually thinking to write like a book, a pamphlet-style book of ideas, short stories, or other sort of content, but I'm not a writer, if I were to be very honest.

Brooks It sounds like you are to me.

Singh I now use writing as a thinking tool; I maintain Google Doc sheets, you know, mapping workflow content and idea building, mapping my thoughts. I used to maintain physical writing books—which I want to start again—where I wrote dance notations, I wrote choreographies. In India we write choreographies, which is unlike anywhere else in the world, I think. I think that habit of thinking through text, mapping the multiple domains of your imagination, is a very fascinating way of propelling ideas. I think of writing as a secondary or tertiary tool, just a supportive element for my work. I do want to add that I speak English, of course, but Punjabi is my mother tongue. I have read medieval literature in Punjabi, a bit of contemporary literature in Punjabi. Thinking and writing in your mother tongue is very different than thinking and writing in another language. It’s different when you write in your mother tongue, operating in a very different script. This kind of connotes or relates to when I'm making dance, which is a very different language, but I see dance as an extension of painting, and I see painting as an extension of dance. The same goes with the languages, when I think in Punjabi and when I think in English. It’s hard to put into words sometimes; it becomes very philosophical in that sense, which is part of the beauty about it.

Brooks Do you dream in English or in Punjabi?

Singh Both. When you ask when I dream, are you talking about subconscious dreams or intentional dreams? Or do you mean imagination?

Brooks I suppose I meant sleep.

Singh That’s a good question. I think both maybe? I don't know…subconsciously I think both I would say, but the majority is probably in Punjabi because that's how my subconscious mind evolved since childhood. Most of my memories are in that language, but English my core language. I think for most of us in India, the subconscious dreaming state happens in both, but the conscious dreaming state, which I’ll call imagination, is mostly in English. But now that you have asked me this quesiton, I am also really thinking about Hindi, too, becuase I speak three languages.

Brooks I see.

Singh But Punjabi is the heart.

Brooks How beautiful. Can you tell me a little bit about Odissi?

Singh Happily. I want to tell you that I started my Odissi journey very serendipitously, to understand painting better. I was a science student, and I moved from sciences to art after high school, after making a deliberate choice that I didn't want to be going into the medicine field, although I cracked my medicine exams. My second option within the realm of a science was horticulture, and you know, sometimes now I think that I would want to do maybe a year long course in horticulture or agriculture; I find it so fascinating because ecology is the parallel heart of my work in so many ways. But then I switched from sciences to painting, I was very much into books, and I used to read a lot of art history here, even when I was in high school, and that's where my imagination sort of like was guiding me into painting. I was aware of Western art movements to some extent, and when I started learning art, that's when I started getting to understand the Indian philosophies and Indian literature. They had always been there, around, but they are not easily available. It's so funny that we live in a world which is so overcharged with Western approaches, that your own cultural approaches sometimes become hidden or secondary. It was at College of Art at New Delhi where I was able to discover Indian philosophy, and I think that is where this big seed was sown; I was painting, making art during the day, taking communication design classes, and in the evenings I would go and see lots and lots of theater, lots and lots of dance, because that's the best part of Delhi. All of these fascinating artists perform at these reputed performative institutions in Delhi, and all those programs are free on a first come, first serve basis, and you can sit and get to see the program. So I had a deep hunger to expand myself and to understand what Indian art is. The National School of Drama, which is a very fascinating institution, was just behind College of Art. I think these were the triggering agents which somehow pushed me to formally learn Odissi. I was seeing a lot of Indian classical dance concerts, but my second year of college, I got to know about my guru Madhavi Mudgal. I didn't know who she was when I met her, when she auditioned me briefly. She asked me to perform some guided movements and eventually she told meshe could take me in a course. The goal was to study Odissi while I was studying as an undergraduate, maybe for three years maximum—because I started in my second year—but I think by the time I was in my second year of Odissi, I really got to see how nuanced the form is, and for the very first time when I saw my guru's senior disciple perform at India International Center, which is a performative venue in central Delhi, I was stunned. That memory is still etched in my mind: live musicians performing for a soloist. The soloist and six musicians were performing like one DNA helical working effortlessly and perfectly. And that was when I was like no, I need to continue my training.

Brooks That sounds incredible.

Singh I think that was also a time where I had this deep belief system which kind of came from reading Indian philosophical books, books on Indian aesthetics. People were constantly questioning oh, will you be studying dance or will you be studying painting? and I knew I wanted to study both. I would say I don’t know what I'll do with it, but I want to study dance because it is completing that hunger in me,  which was to understand my own existence. I have been a very spiritual person, and I think dance has kind of completed a deep understanding of consciousness, which related to what I was thinking about when I was surfacely reading Schopenhauer and Kant during my fourth year. Western philosophy was also an added parcel of painting training where I went to school. Dance really helped me understand how Schopenhauer's philosophies were strongly influenced by Indian philosophy, and how so much of Vedic knowledge has been borrowed. Odissi was one format where you see working knowledge of so many centuries, though the form has undulated, and has been reforming ever in its 2200 year irregular journey. And in post-colonial, post-independent India, it has been reshaped, too. But I was reading the literature, the seventeenth century poetry, the thirteenth century Sanskrit literature and the musical treatises which are associated with it, and the painting treatises from the sixth century, and that all kind of culled together in a way that I understood how rich this format is, and that was the reason I continued training in Odissi even when I was in Delhi after my art training. Even while working I continued studying Odissi, and that was one reason I could not ever pick up a full-time job, which was sad, but I had to learn dance. That’s a choice I made, and I feel so happy that I made that choice because Odissi has acted as a catalyst for my existence, I think, in terms of visual arrangements, sonic arrangements, spatial arrangements, compositional arrangements. The elements of dance and particularly Indian classical dance systems are not a singular mechanism. That is one thing which I have to corroborate: they are a very compound mechanism where architecture, music, sculpture, drawing, movement, understanding rhythm, principles of design, awareness, and philosophies all come together as a system. And to be a good dancer, you really need to understand these things. And thinking about costumes or textiles; textiles are nothing else but color systems, and India has one of the richest histories of textiles in the world. Now when I look back, having studied Odissi formally for a decade, I wish I could continue still with my guru in person. We do have deeper conversations regularly over the phone, and each time I'm in India I do visit her, and I do talk about my own compositions, but I'm solving some of this by myself. The knowledge I have of Odissi is a treasure I hold, and giving it back to the next generation through teaching or through sharing is very, very important. I think that's another thing about these dance forms: you are a part of that grand river, you are not just holding it, you have to pass it on, and I think this is what my guru used to say, that is what her guru used to say to her when she learned from him. The knowledge must go on. I think these kind of systems we don't see that easily in the West. And that is the heart of it, I would say, criticality, thinking, reflecting, doing it, making it, and questioning it. That is what tradition is. These are not static traditions. They are very contemporary, and most of the common topics which we deal with in Odissi, for example, is love, is eros, which is beyond just sex. Love and attraction is timeless.

Brooks Yes, it is. It transcends time.

Singh It does.

Brooks You said so much I want to respond to!

Singh This is the synopsis. The lengthy synopsis. {laughs}

Brooks Of course. Both the content and the substance and also the conceptual origins of what you just said prove your point about Odissi being this kind of intergenerational, interconnected tradition that goes back such a long time. And it’s communal, which is not, as you say, something that is so much part of traditions in the West, with the exception of perhaps, for example, a religion like Catholicism or Judaism. But perhaps those are complicated examples, because I was going to say that these traditions sit somehow parallel to mainstream Western culture, but both Catholicism and Judaism contain and project strong cultural traditions as an extension of the particulars of the faith and the dogma. But your description of Odissi is such that it seems ingrained in certain Indian communities in such a deep, rich way.

Singh Yes, I think so.

Brooks Are you teaching or sharing Odissi anywhere in New York other than through your work or your performances?

Singh I actually used to teach when I came as a student. I was passing it on, I was not doing it for the sake of money and I could not do it for the sake of money because I was on a  student visa. I was sharing its knowledge to some South Indian ladies who were doctors or engineers and who had this deep cultural awareness. I would say that in the last couple of decades, Indian classical dance is not everyone's cup of tea. Indian classical dance systems are complicated; they're not like Bollywood, they won't attract everyone, so you have to be wired in that way, you have to be a little cuckoo to be interested or to understand. But the best part with Indian classical dance, if it is performed properly in a wholesome, aesthetic setting with good solid training, it has such power of attraction even to a person who doesn't even understand it. And that person could be from any culture. It’s so sad that half of the Indians don't even know about their own dance practices and they think it is boring. But there were the women I was teaching who had that sort of mindset. They would come once in to my home, almost every Saturday, and I would share the knowledge. We would eat together, so it was a sort of community building. I ended up teaching them for two years, and it grounded me, it gave me purpose. My experience in the US had been very white, and I was looking to connect with my roots. When you move out of your own country, no matter what you do, no matter how heavy an English speaker you are, sometimes you do want simple things, and other simple things can be people who think like you, or look like you, and I think immediately these gals were like that. They were very well off in their professions, so it also was like finding friends outside your work environment, and for me it had nothing to do with art but it had a lot to do with my existence. That community building through Odissi gave me a deep understanding and also I think that when you teach the form, it is then when the form reveals a lot. It's very easy to learn a lot over many years. The training in Odissi is very slow, at least the first three years you're just learning the basics, like ballet, and by the time you're in fourth year, you start understanding how the structures are conjoined, you know what the components are, how they sit together and make a string of systems, but then you really get to understand, after having spent ten years. When you reapproach the compositions which you learned eight years ago, it gives you a very different flavor altogether. So when I was teaching these women, I had to dissect it, I had to bisect each composition, teach them because they were newbies to the form, and that also helped me understand the form. When you dissect where the components are situated, you can actually dig deeper into how the space and time are utilized. In a simple composition which you know, you take it for granted because you have assimilated it, and you can go and perform it, but when you're teaching it you really have to teach the A B C D of the form and that's very challenging.

Brooks It sounds like the way that you are engaging with it now feels like you’re treating it with a kind of purity. You’re giving it the respect that you think it deserves.

Singh That’s an interesting question. I think I'm using it as a thinking mechanism. I want to perform it. In the last three years in Seattle, I didn't rehearse. I was rehearsing, but I was not rehearsing that much. Two years ago when I was in Bombay, I really had a golden period because I had a percussionist, and I had a musician who could come sing for me live, and when you have a musician singing for you, when you have a percussionist playing for you, that is the real charm of dancing Indian classical dances, that is the real charm of Odissi. Dancing on the recording is one thing, but the real charm is when it is haptic. When three people are in a live communication, there are so many discoveries happening, and when you find the right singer who knows how to sing properly, who's well trained, who can respond to you and a percussionist who can solve the fractional mathematics of the rhythm systems, which are very, very complex, and who can give you complete joy, when you know what that is like…that is the reason I don't want to dilute it. I can utilize Odissi and I can pull out a lot of components, lots of strands, which I often do, in terms of the performances which I built. In the performance which I did at Perrotin Gallery two years ago, I gave a complete Queer twist to the literature, to the poems, which I have memorized and assimilated over the years. It is so amazing how you can build components and give them a complete Queer twist, you know, you can switch one character to another character, you can completely change the storyline, and I think that's where the power of imagination is important. Possibilities exist because these texts are rigid, but they are not that rigid. You can morph them for the sake of your needs. I think that is the genius of these literatures or the dramaturgical treatises which we use, this is how profound they are, they culminate mathematics, they culminate philosophy, they culminate design, theatrical constructions, but they also allow you to use your imagination and your mind to extend it. That's one thing which I find I love about Indian philosophy, it doesn't put you tightly into a diameter or a circumference, into a tight circle. It is very automatic that people who are thinkers over the centuries will add more to it, and the same goes for Odissi. The more and more I have conversations with my guru, who's one of India's leading dancers of the form, and now being seventy-four, she allows, she encourages, you to experiment within the form, once you know the grammar properly because that's how you will make it exciting. I think this is what she did when she was doing things in the 1980s and the 1990s, or even in the early 2000s, and this is what her guru did when he was expanding the form in post-independent India, and this is how he became such a genius. Her guru took to every nook and corner of the world. There was an American student of his in the 1970s from Michigan and so he had also visited University of Iowa University in the dance department and I saw the footage in the archives. It was in the same classroom where I was taking these improv classes. He had come in 1984 and had performed and given lecture demonstrations, so it was very fascinating that my guru's guru had been to my own university, which I had no clue about until the time I moved to the US.

Brooks That’s amazing.

Singh Odissi can really touch your life! That's the beauty of it, and I think those are the remarks which I've often seen from people when, in certain scenarios, like where I performed, people say oh, it has just moved us. I think it catalyzes people, if done properly, so I use Odissi in that context. I'm looking forward to using it in short films, and ethnographical, anthropological approaches to the form.

Brooks What was your exposure to dance as a young person?

Singh Not much. I think it was TV, Bollywood. I don't like the word Bollywood because it is a very limited word. In Indian film songs from 90s and 80s, I used to see some Indian classical dance on TV. My parents never went to Indian classical dance concerts. For me it was an accidental discovery, after going to college. Indian classical dance audience is very limited, but once people get touched by it, it is like you just missed it for the whole life. But I think most of my early exposure to it was Bollywood, though I used to listen a lot to music which had Indian classical elements. I didn't know why it attracted me; I think now when I look back, I think it's the grammar, which is the hidden knowledge, and how beautifully the system of Indian classical music, which is five thousand plus years old,  shapes everything. I must say that Indian dancers are music visually personified. I tell this all the time. To be a good dancer you have to understand Indian classical music and hence this is the reason like I'm able to do these paintings because there was already an imported knowledge system. It happened automatically. I never knew years ago that one day I will approach the Ragamala paintings from a Queer perspective, but that's where I am right now, because it's the music which is the heart of Odissi. It is the rhythm which is the heart of Odissi, because it operates at a medium tempo, that is where it really comes together. It neither works efficiently at a slow tempo or at a fast-paced tempo. It is the medium rhythmic flow. There was a very interesting Austrian Odissi dancer I met in Delhi years ago, and we were sitting in a conversational set up, and she said that medium tempo is the BPM or the beats per second and this resonates with the heartbeat and I was so stunned. It was so fascinating to me why medium tempo is such a powerful tempo. It aligns biologically to the heart rate.

Brooks Yes.

Singh I was like this is crazy. I think these forms are very biological. There is such lyricality and grace in Odissi. I think also just talking about ecology, if I may touch on that, my guru used to say that when her guru constructed his movements, he used to observe elements in nature, a sway of a certain tree of a certain species, or the rigidity of a certain tree or the curvilinearity of certain forms which are also reflected in the temple architecture from thirteenth century, or the the script in Odissi, which is curvilinear because it is written on palm leaves. And certain palm leaves are pinnately compound leaves, you can't write in straight lines like Roman alphabet, so you have to etch in curvilinear form, so that you could retain the script. So the script evolved because of the needs of the palm leaf and the palm leaf manuscripts, and hence the curvilinearity which is seen in the architecture, hence the curvilinearity in the rhythm system. Of course you don't didactically sit and solve it, you know, but I think it's a very natural phenomenon, the way I discovered at that moment that the medium tempo resonates with the heartbeat. There's always hidden mathematics and abstraction. I personally find, if I might touch base on abstraction, I think music is the highest form of abstraction. There's no doubt on that. Beyond that is silence.

Brooks I have always loved music, but I have come to love it more than anything else in the last few years. I keep saying to myself, in the presence of great music, particularly live music, that to me music feels like the first art. It is the most foundational because it is abstract, because it is, in a way, non-existent, or non-physical. It's just it's sound. Yet its presence can’t be denied.

Singh Yes.

Brooks I discussed this with some friends, however, and they disagreed and said that dance, that movement, was the first art.

Singh There's a very interesting statement in a medieval painting treatise which connects drawings and paintings to sculpture, painting and sculpture to dance, and dance to music because that's all kinetic. Music is the underlying rhythm onto which you visually create a dimensional form, so music is beyond dance because you dance on to music. Music is poetry in a way, and it's very interesting how the poeticality or rhythm sits together. Music is no doubt the most profound attraction. I think it can vary from a person to person, but systems of music over the years, whatever they are, howsoever refined they are, they are the heart of abstraction.

Brooks I agree. It's so interesting that so much of your painting work is inspired by the Ragamala paintings and that one of Salman Toor’s early loves was the Mughal miniatures. Both of these very old, very traditional artistic lineages are now finding their way into not only contemporary art, but into contemporary Queer art.

Singh Yes, I think exposure to Indian art is happening. I can speak more of New Delhi. I haven't had this conversation with Salman, though we had talked about art and our common take on painting. I think when we chatted, I was more into performance art than painting; I was taking a halt from painting in those years, like 2017, 2018. I can say that when I was looking at modern Indian art, it was mostly oil on canvas and then acrylic on canvas, in the 1960s and 1970s, but when you look into the miniatures, whether they are the Mughal miniatures or whether they are regional miniatures from the Himalayas or whatever, I think they're also like photographs. I always say that, because they were documenting anything and everything. Some of the fascinating Mughal miniatures are where an emperor is celebrating his son’s sixteenth birthday and giving him the biggest possible ruby to commemorate this occasion or he's weighing his son in equal amounts of gold and treasure. How the details are sort of documented is like a nuanced Hasselblad photograph equivalent, so we can kind of go back in time. I think that's another aspect that why many these works are so profound because not only the detail of the craftsmanship, the nuance, but anything and everything is possible in Indian miniatures. The quality, of course, sums up everything, so it's like looking back five hundred years ago, four hunded years ago, acting as a photograph. That’s a sort of conduit, which is what Hans Memling’s or Dürer’s drawings or Leonardo's compositions do. I think Indian miniatures sit at that scale, and I think Rembrandt knew how profound this art is because he had some exposure to regional miniatures during the Dutch India trade in mid 1600s. I think his forms are so evocative because exposure to Indian miniature forms didn’t happen easily then. I think it's very interesting to say that these forms sit like Indian classical music, in that you need to be prepared to receive them because they are tiny and small, and only in very specific museums are they available. People had not seen them that quickly or efficiently, and reproductions never ever do justice. If you've ever seen a real Mughal miniature painting, forget it. No quality reproduction can bring it to a given equation. I think this is the reason that miniatures are not an object of the masses, just the same as classical music is not a music of masses. I think those who get touched by it are lucky ones, and it could be any and everyone who's sensitive enough. I think that is why these forms are just so ethereal.

Brooks I love that word, sensitive. I think encouraging people to be open to their own sensitivity is such an important way of giving people a pathway to to explore these things.

Singh Yes.

Brooks I wanted to also ask you about what you describe as the importance of submissive male characters in your paintings.

Singh When I formally started taking Odissi classes—I think I was nineteen then—I was a very quiet person at that time. I am still partly introverted at heart. I may be an extrovert when needed, but by default, I like my own company. I like my very close friends' company. I can be shameless, when needed. I think it also stems directly from dancing, because when we talk about dance literature, these texts, the components celebrate eros in such a beautiful way that it is not just about an intercourse or sex or like physical touch all the time. There are so many dimensions: how eyes can talk, how restraint or how love and separation can operate, how restrictions can allow you to expand, nuances and how all of these texts celebrate love all the time. I think Odissi becomes so special because it's filled with love. And when we are reading or studying these dances, from Shringara or an equivalent, eros is the predominant emotion we human beings experience all the time. I think by the time you're like twelve or thirteen years old, when you are coming of  age, until the time you die, you're always—at least in my experience as a man—you're like always thinking about eros, in a way, impressing people, thinking about attraction, dressing up, blah blah blah. There is this sort of allowed understanding of what attraction can be. This idea of submissiveness is that it's such an important part in the dance training. It's nothing to do with being coy. It has nothing to do with being not demanding, but I think submissiveness is one way to express the characters in the work; they are contained, they're aware about themselves. In the paintings I portray them the way I do because I kind of know them. I’m aware of myself. Gone are the days when I used to be inhibitive about my things. I also sort of properly came out to a lot of people after having moved to the US because I didn't think that there was enough need at that time when I was in Delhi, and times were very different politically in India at that time. Collectively, this embodied experience, through dance and through self awareness, brings that to these characters. They don't need to be hawking or shouting; they know what they're capable of, they know their power, and hence they are resplendent. They're not submissive, they appear to be self-contained, in their own world. That's why they don't need to look directly into your eyes.

Brooks Oh, I love that.

Singh I think that's where power and magic happens, when you're aware that you don't need validation from a society or the changing trends. I think it allows you to be aware of how, for example, in the United States from the 1950s until the AIDS crisis, how much price people have paid. Look at the generations who have lived before us, look how much price they paid and how much more they were hidden, and I think of how can we be more mindful and be thoughtful to this. You know, when we are meeting people, it's very easy to smash, say something odd to a person and then you don't even realize how much you hurt the person. I'm not saying I want to be responsible all the time for other peoples’ feelings, but I'm choosing to be thoughtful because eventually at the end, I want to be happy. I'm happy the way I'm portraying my characters. I'm happy with the interactions I'm having with people, and I think effective communication is so important. My characters are not responsible for other peoples’ feelings, but they’re also not the loudmouths.

Brooks They’re not trying to please anyone, but they’re also not trying to be the loudest voice in the room or the most visible.

Singh I think this also corresponds to Odissi. There's really so much Odissi now available; the Met has hosted some brilliant Odissi dancers, some very good friends who have done such stunning justice to the form. The Met has opened its galleries to employ and utilize objects in conjunction with Odissi as a format. Lincoln Center has been celebrating Odissi since 1996, so there's a very clear awareness, at least in the East Coast, of what Odissi can be, which is very fascinating. Odissi, as a style, being lyrical, it’s subtle, it is a very unostentatious, it doesn't demand thuds and noise. Odissi is more tender, I think that tenderness also stems from the fact that in Odissi, when the eyes or the gaze moves from left to right, it touches a loci of points, rather like corner to corner of the eye movement. There is a softness, and the softness also somehow comes with the way the characters situate themselves, and I think I do want to keep doing it at least for some time, until I make some drastic changes. There are always experimentations going on in the studio. I do want to do these shameless characters with a bluntness there on their face, which I think could be an interesting opposition to the submissive awareness. Sometimes you need to be like a loud faced extrovert, you know? It's a contrast, like a color contrast. Let's think about it that way.

Brooks It's also a more full picture of what it is to be a human being, and certainly what it is to be a sensual being.

Singh Exactly, a sacred sensual being. I think it's a beautiful way to think about it.

Brooks Recently, I have made maybe five or six drawings which are quite explicitly sexual, including taking a couple of the images directly from porn. I've never really done that before. There is a fair amount of nudity in my work, there's a lot of Queerness in my work, but it is classical, and there hasn't really been much that is explicit. I was curious to know if I could make something with this kind of explicit imagery that still felt like my work, that still felt sensual, that felt sacred, frankly.

Singh And?

Brooks And the answer is yes.

Singh Oh yes! Why not? I used to read Kama Sutra in bits and parts during undergrad, after completing my undergrad, and it's very beautiful. Kama Sutra talks about the celebration of bodily love, but there are chapters in Kama Sutra which talk about that a person who's skilled in the art of lovemaking should also be skilled in the art of drawing, which is very fascinating. So they say a Nāgaraka, an evolved person, in this case a man, should know the art of drawing. I think the art of drawing on one's lover's body is as sensual as it gets because it is a prolonged touch. There are these medieval texts which talk about drawing on the body with a mango juice or with a fresh fruit or with a fresh flower pressed against the body and with the juice of a flower, which is so erotic, and porn cannot be extracted to that level. I think well cinematographed sex is an art. I think it's very fascinating. I don’t doubt that. I have thought of it, but I think eventually it also comes down to the fact that you have your own style, you have your own skills, even if you're bringing a tertiary, secondary subject like that into your prime domain, it will morph into the way you think. It is only going to be an extension of your mechanism, so there's no harm.

Brooks Exactly.

Singh I think that we should talk more about that. I like that idea.

Brooks Okay. I haven't really shown them to anyone.

Singh But you will. And you’ll be visiting New York next month, right?

Brooks Yes, for Independent, where I’ll be showing my work.

Singh Lovely. We'll have more conversations then because last time was just like a fleeting hour long hangout which was from point A to point B. I would like to have this conversation because I think this is a very interesting arena to have conversations. I think I do want to talk about Queer cruising, gay cruising, which still sometimes is a norm in very certain pockets of India, but now luckily or unluckily, whatever you want to say, everyone uses the apps. The interactions through the eyes is so fascinating to me, because that is where half of the Eros in Indian literature situates. The gaze gets the person's attention, or the attraction through the eyes, speaking through the eyes. There are so many proverbs in Hindi with utilizing eyes, which I just love. I think that could actually become a big thing. Other proverbs and eyes can become…oh, I'm going to write this down…

Brooks You should!

Singh Eyes, the gaze…

Brooks The gaze or the gays? G-A-Z-E or G-A-Y-S?

Singh G-A-Z-E, not G-A-Y-S. I’m very scared of G-A-Y- S. {laughs}

Brooks G-A-Z-E for me is everything. It’s one reason most of my figures tend to face forward. If the figure is not engaging with the viewer, I want it to be legible that they’re engaging with something else.

Singh Superb.

Brooks Next time we meet, we can both talk about whatever you want, about cruising.

Singh I think apps have made things both good and redundant at the same time. It's a good thing that, in a society where certain things are a taboo, the apps sometimes allow certain possibilities which could not be done otherwise. In India, it’s not as explicit sexually as the U.S. is and how Europe is, which is more sexually open than the U.S., which I only got to discover after moving to the U.S. The way Hollywood portrays it here is not the truth; the U.S. is a little more repressive about sex and sexuality compared to the European countries.

Brooks For sure. Our Puritan roots still echo.

Singh But also I think the overconsumption suddenly is problematic. I'm no one to speak ill or good about this aspect, it is simply a collective, anthropological reflection. There are pros and cons to the apps versus being in person. I want to polish more of my in-person skills, you know.

Brooks Well, you better get busy. {laughs}

Singh He said well you better get busy! {laughs}

Other Swans Conversation No. Fifteen

Kuldeep Singh (b. 1984, New Delhi, India) is a visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He completed his MFA at the University of Iowa in 2015 and his BFA at the University of Delhi in 2007. Singh will feature in a solo performance at Kistefos Museum, Norway in summer 2026.

Selected solo exhibitions include Between the Anthill and Tamarind Tree, Perrotin, New York, USA (2024); Men, Music and Hills, Sand Point Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, USA (2024); NAKHRA - Towards Sacred Sensuality, Chemould CoLab, Mumbai, India; THROUGH THE KALI-EROS, Knockdown Center, New York, USA; and Re-Imagining Indian Dance: Moving Forward, Asia Society, New York, USA (2018). Singh’s work is included in Deviant Ornaments, a group exhibition at The National Museum, Oslo, Norway (November 2025–March 2026).

His work has also been included as part of group exhibitions at Mint Gallery, Munich, Germany; Aicon Gallery, New York, USA; Perrotin, New York, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; and Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway. Singh’s work has been acquired by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India, and other private collections across: Singapore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Cape Town, Munich, Leipzig, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.

In 2018, he was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New York, US.