Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh is an artist. Her medium is photography and the book is her primary form. She was born in 1961 in New Delhi. She studied visual communication at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. She has published twelve books: Zakir Hussain (1986), Myself,Mona (2001), Privacy (2003), Chairs (2005), Go Away Closer (2007), Sent a Letter (2008), Blue Book (2009), Dream Villa(2010), Dayanita Singh (2010), House of Love (2011), File Room (2013), and Museum of Chance (2014). In her books, often made in collaboration with the legendary publisher and printer Gerhard Steidl, she experiments with alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs.

Her latest project, Museum Bhavan, is a beautiful boxed set of nine intimate concertina books. It is a marriage of photography’s two major formats: book and exhibition, and creates an experience where books have the same, if not greater, artistic value than prints hanging on a gallery wall. Museum Bhavan was named ‘Book of the Year’ at the prestigious Paris Photo 2017.

Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions at the MMK, Frankfurt (2014), Art Institute of Chicago (2014), the Hayward Gallery, London (2013), Frith Street Gallery, London (2012), and the Mapfre Foundation, Madrid (2010). She has also shown in the 2nd Kochi Biennale (2014), at the German Pavillion in the Venice Biennale (2013), at the Fourth Guangzhou Triennial, as part of ILLUMInations at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), and at Manifesta 7 (2008). Her project ‘Museum of Chance’, which comprises 164 images taken over 30 years inventively arranged in two tall wooden structures was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York in 2017.