The Bookmaker: The various museums of Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh builds a memorial of photographs that connect and stand isolated all at once.

4 min readUpdated: Jan 6, 2016 04:45 PM IST

Dayanita Singh, photographs, photo exhibition, photography exhibition, KNMA, The File Museum, Museum of Furniture, Museum of machine, talk

Photographer Dayanita Singh enshrines her photographs through stories in her latest exhibition (Oinam Anand)

In a city dominated by conventional museums, here are nine distinctive ones under the same roof. Each with its own flap in teak that folds and unfolds like Japanese screens to create walls and windows between them. Their curator Dayanita Singh can unveil and conceal them at will. So a museum could be covered with white muslin one week, and another day, it might be open for visitors. Together, the photographs that comprise them connect and respond to one another.

But, each also stands on its own. As a collective, they belong to Singh’s archive — her labour over three decades that she has now curated into idiosyncratic museums, exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Delhi.

“Photography needs to move away from the walls. It needs to find other forms. These museums encourage viewers to look at works in an interconnected way. It’s about editing, sequencing and creating new story lines,” says Singh, 54. We see her in each photograph, but also in person, as a little girl photographed by her mother Nony Singh in the Museum of Little Ladies. Giving her company are many other ladies and the accompanying museums. The File Museum, with similar-sized photographs, is its sister, notes Singh. If the former is dedicated solely to women, the latter is largely unpeopled and an elegy to paper in the age of the digitisation. The two museums find cousins in other portable museums, each with a definite category of pictures — Museum of Furniture, Museum of Machines, Museum of Photography and Museum of Vitrines. Their origins could be traced to her acclaimed 2008 book, Sent a Letter, in which Singh explored the idea of the book as an exhibition. “It led me in 2013 to the ‘Museum Bhavan’. I think I had always known the book was my form,” says the photo-artist, who introspects through her frames. Editing is crucial. It is when Singh stops and looks at the material available to her on contact sheets to weed out the numerous themes. “I don’t like to go out knowing what to photograph.”

Central to the exhibition at KNMA is the Museum of Chance, with images that came together because of chance and are not connected by content. It borrows from Singh’s formidable collection, which she has been building since she accompanied Zakir Hussain on his tours in the 80s, leading to her first book Zakir Hussain (1986). The museums also feature other favourites who have been recurring in Singh’s oeuvre — the iconic image of a young girl on a bed with her face hidden that appeared on the cover of Go Away Closer, to portraits of Mona Ahmed, the eunuch on whom Singh based her publication Myself Mona Ahmed, and even photographs taken by her mother, Nony Singh, an avid photographer.

At the heart, though, the display comes across as enlarged books, where pages can be edited and re-edited to tell different tales. “The editing of these museums has been done not just by themes, but also tonally,” says Singh, adding that there are numerous museums within each. The nine titles might be suggestive, but there is an interplay between the words within as well — from those that appear in the frames to those that Singh deliberately imbibes, including a Vikram Seth poem in the Museum of Chance. And though some of these museums have travelled from London’s Hayward Gallery to New Delhi, the exhibits are not the same. The set of photographs will keep altering.

Singh plans to move the mobile museums to her Vasant Vihar studio, where they will be on permanent display, open for public viewing on the first and second full moon of each year and also by appointment. “Why not,” says Singh, when asked about the rather odd open days. There is a warning though — each museum might not be open for viewing at all times, they could be covered, or the wooden frames might be empty. Meanwhile, another museum is in the making. It is possible that is a Museum of Glass, says Singh, going back to her neatly-laid contact sheets.

The exhibition at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket, closes on March 30

Vandana Kalra

Vandana Kalra is an art critic and Deputy Associate Editor with The Indian Express. She has spent more than two decades chronicling arts, culture and everyday life, with modern and contemporary art at the heart of her practice. With a sustained engagement in the arts and a deep understanding of India’s cultural ecosystem, she is regarded as a distinctive and authoritative voice in contemporary art journalism in India. Vandana Kalra's career has unfolded in step with the shifting contours of India’s cultural landscape, from the rise of the Indian art market to the growing prominence of global biennales and fairs. Closely tracking its ebbs and surges, she reports from studios, galleries, museums and exhibition spaces and has covered major Indian and international art fairs, museum exhibitions and biennales, including the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Documenta, Islamic Arts Biennale. She has also been invited to cover landmark moments in modern Indian art, including SH Raza’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the opening of the MF Husain Museum in Doha, reflecting her long engagement with the legacies of India’s modern masters. Alongside her writing, she applies a keen editorial sensibility, shaping and editing art and cultural coverage into informed, cohesive narratives. Through incisive features, interviews and critical reviews, she brings clarity to complex artistic conversations, foregrounding questions of process, patronage, craft, identity and cultural memory. The Global Art Circuit: She provides extensive coverage of major events like the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Serendipity Arts Festival, and high-profile international auctions. Artist Spotlights: She writes in-depth features on modern masters (like M.F. Husain) and contemporary performance artists (like Marina Abramović). Art and Labor: A recurring theme in her writing is how art reflects the lives of the marginalized, including migrants, farmers, and labourers. Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025) Her recent portfolio is dominated by the coverage of the 2025 art season in India: 1. Kochi-Muziris Biennale & Serendipity Arts Festival "At Serendipity Arts Festival, a 'Shark Tank' of sorts for art and crafts startups" (Dec 20, 2025): On how a new incubator is helping artisans pitch products to investors. "Artist Birender Yadav's work gives voice to the migrant self" (Dec 17, 2025): A profile of an artist whose decade-long practice focuses on brick kiln workers. "At Kochi-Muziris Biennale, a farmer’s son from Patiala uses his art to draw attention to Delhi’s polluted air" (Dec 16, 2025). "Kochi Biennale showstopper Marina Abramović, a pioneer in performance art" (Dec 7, 2025): An interview with the world-renowned artist on the power of reinvention. 2. M.F. Husain & Modernism "Inside the new MF Husain Museum in Qatar" (Nov 29, 2025): A three-part series on the opening of Lawh Wa Qalam in Doha, exploring how a 2008 sketch became the architectural core of the museum. "Doha opens Lawh Wa Qalam: Celebrating the modernist's global legacy" (Nov 29, 2025). 3. Art Market & Records "Frida Kahlo sets record for the most expensive work by a female artist" (Nov 21, 2025): On Kahlo's canvas The Dream (The Bed) selling for $54.7 million. "All you need to know about Klimt’s canvas that is now the most expensive modern artwork" (Nov 19, 2025). "What’s special about a $12.1 million gold toilet?" (Nov 19, 2025): A quirky look at a flushable 18-karat gold artwork. 4. Art Education & History "Art as play: How process-driven activities are changing the way children learn art in India" (Nov 23, 2025). "A glimpse of Goa's layered history at Serendipity Arts Festival" (Dec 9, 2025): Exploring historical landmarks as venues for contemporary art. Signature Beats Vandana is known for her investigative approach to the art economy, having recently written about "Who funds the Kochi-Muziris Biennale?" (Dec 11, 2025), detailing the role of "Platinum Benefactors." She also explores the spiritual and geometric aspects of art, as seen in her retrospective on artist Akkitham Narayanan and the history of the Cholamandal Artists' Village (Nov 22, 2025). ... Read More

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