Dayanita Singh uses photography to reflect and expand on the ways in which we relate to photographic images.
Publishing is a significant part of her practice. In her books, often made in collaboration with Gerhard Steidl, she experiments with alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs. The ‘book-object’ is concurrently a book, an art object, an exhibition and a catalogue. The work, also developing from her interest in the poetic and narrative possibility of sequence and re-sequence, allows her to both create photographic sequence and disrupt it.
Her recent work, drawn from her extensive photographic oeuvre, is a series of mobile museums that allow her images to be endlessly edited, sequenced, archived and displayed.
Museum Bhavan has been shown at the Hayward Gallery, London (2013), the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014), the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2014) and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (2016). Singh has authored eleven books: Zakir Hussain, 1986; Myself, Mona Ahmed, 2001; Privacy, 2003; Chairs, 2005; Go Away Closer, 2007; Sent A Letter, 2008; Blue Book, 2009; Dream Villa, 2010; House of Love, 2011; File Room, 2013 and Museum of Chance, 2014. Her twelfth book, Museum Bhavan, also published with Steidl, is forthcoming.