Museum Bhavan – Dayanita Singh

In Museum Bhavan, Dayanita Singh creates a new space between publishing and the museum – an experience where books have the same if not greater artistic value than prints hanging on a gallery wall. Consisting of nine individual “museums” in book form, Museum Bhavan is a miniature version of Singh’s traveling exhibition by the same name, whose prints are placed in folding expanding wooden structures (her “photo-architecture”), which she interchanges at will.

The images in Museum Bhavan – old and new, intriguingly literal and suggestive – have been intuitively grouped into lyrical chapters in a visual story, such as “Little Ladies Museum” and “Ongoing Museum,” as well as more specific series like “Museum of Machines.” Following her Sent a Letter (2008), the starting point for this project, the books are housed in a handmade box and fold out into accordion-like strips which Singh encourages viewers to install and curate as they wish in their own homes. The exhibition thus becomes a book, and the book becomes an exhibition. The book comes with softcover in a clam-shell box of 10 items, with 298 pages, 241 images, and measuring 9cm x 13.7cm.

Artist / Author

Publishing is also a significant part of the Dayanita Singh’s practice: in her books she experiments with alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs. Here, Singh’s latest is the “book-object,” a work that is concurrently a book, an art object, an exhibition and a catalog. Learn more about Singh and her artistic practice on her website.

Sourced / excerpted from this artist’s website. (2022)