Museum of Chance – Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh’s Museum of Chance is a book about how life unfolds and asks to be recorded and edited, along and off the axis of time. The inscrutably woven photographic sequence of Singh’s Go Away Closer now has grown into a labyrinth of connections and correspondences. The thread through this novel-like web of happenings is that elusive entity called “chance.” It is Chance that seems to disperse as well as gather fragments or clusters of experience, creating a form of simultaneity that is realized in the idea and matter of the book, with its interlaced or parallel timelines and patterns of recurrence and return. The eighty-eight quadra-tone images in the book also appear on the front and back covers in random pairs, transforming each copy of the book into a distinct piece of work by the author. The book comes with clothbound hardcover, a tipped-in photo on the front and back, 88 photographs, 96 pages, quadra-tone, and measuring 28 x 32.5 cm.

Artist / Author

Publishing is also a significant part of the Dayanita Singh’s practice: in her books, often made in collaboration with Gerhard Steidel, 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)