The present work by Arpana Caur is part of the artist’s 'Day and Night' series. In the painting the artist depicts the continuous and never-ending cycles of Day and Night, Creation and Destruction, Life and Death. The canvas shows a procession of three female figures set against a black background – their luminous colours contrasting vividly against the background. The dark female figure is seen using a scissors to cut the fine thread of life symbolizing death and the end of life. The progression of time is portrayed by the interlocking procession of figures, one in front of the other.

The text on the left of the figures reads ‘Time Go Slow Slow’ and alludes to the nature of time and the fact that it waits for no man. The artist is telling the viewer to live life to the full and enjoy himself completely before the thread of life is cut by the scissors of death.

Arpana Caur is one of India’s most respected contemporary artists. She was born in Delhi in 1954 and is largely self-taught. As an artist her work is preoccupied with the themes of the girl child, the condition of women and the growing violence in India. Her work is consistently figurative and narrative in nature.

Between 1975 and 1996, Caur received 18 solo shows, and participated in 9 national and international exhibitions and art festivals, including the First Baghdad Biennale (1986), Algiers Biennale (1987), group shows at Saytama Museum and Glenbarra Museum, Japan, the exhibition 'Imagined City', Museum of Modem Art, Brasilia, Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro (1994-95). In 1995, she attended the 'Nature and Environment' workshop jointly organized by the Lalit Kala Akademi, Max Mueller Bhavan and Japan Foundation. In the same year, Arpana executed the commission for doing a large painting for the Hiroshima Museum's permanent collection, on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the Nuclear Holocaust.

In 1985 Arpana Caur received the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society Award, Commendation Certificate at the Algiers Biennale, and Gold Medal at the Sixth Triennale-India in 1986.

Arpana Caur’s work is featured in many private and public collections in India and abroad including:

• National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
• Jehangir Nicholson Collection, Mumbai
• Birla Akademi Collection, Calcutta
• Kiran Nader Collection, india
• Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh
• Ethnographic Museum, Stockholm
• Bradford Museum, Bradford, U.K.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• Kunst Museum, Dusseldorf
• Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art, Japan
• Glenbarra Museum, Japan
• Singapore Museum of Modern Art, Singapore
• Rockefeller Collection, USA
• Peabody Essex Museum, Boston
• Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
• Museum of Contemporary Art, LA