Museums can travel too. They can come to you if you can't go to them. At least Dayanita Singh's museums can. They come in suitcases, they come in accordion fold booklets and in other shapes and forms. Open Museum of Curiosity and spread it out on your desktop, lay out Museum of Machines on your living room shelf. Change the display, focus on a different image every day. The museum is yours, the choice is yours. “Yes, one can have his/her own exhibition anywhere, without me. There is a possibility of some 3000 exhibitions of my work which have nothing to do with galleries or museums,” exclaims the senior photo-artist. For a long time now, through her work, Dayanita has been addressing concerns like the artist-viewer relationship and the audience’s experience of photography. And museum Bhavan --- nine-accordion fold booklets, housed in a beautiful box handmade in India, is borne out of these concerns. Like so many of her previous books, it is published by the German photographic imprint Steidl. In India, the box is being distributed by Roli Books.
Nine museums - Little Ladies Museum, Museum of Photography, Museum of Men, Museum of Machines, Museum of Furniture, Printing Press Museum, Godrej Museum, Museum of Vitrines and Ongoing Museum along with a thinner book titled, Conversation Chambers, rest inside the box.
Dayanita started off as a photographer in the 80s, who had exhibitions in galleries and museums. The passive relationship between an image hung on the wall with the viewer and other limitations pushed the artist to make an attempt to change the nature of engagement. She first created photo-books with 'Sent a Letter’, in 2008. The glass windows of Satram Das Jewellers’ shop on Park Street in Kolkata has ‘Sent A Letter’ displayed to date. The demarcation between a book and an exhibition didn’t work for her. The alumnus of the National School of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, and the International Centrefor Photography (ICP), New York, US, called herself a bookmaker, who was making books like ‘File Room’, ‘Dream Villa’, ‘House of Love’. The books gradually transformed into book-objects like Kochi Box, File Room, Museum of Chance. The photographs - the essential raw material - gave her immense possibilities to experiment. The form and concept kept her occupied and in 2015, ‘Conversation Chambers: Museum Bhavan’, came along. Aesthetics of architecture, sculpture melded in these folding wooden panels that opened and closed like books, fitted with about 800 black-and-white photographs. The form and the photographs were rearranged throughout the exhibition at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). Museum Bhavan emerged from there.
“I never thought my museums would be acquired by another museum. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art bought File Museum. Tate Modern has 40 prints of ‘Go Away Closer’. Museum Of Chance was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). When these museums acquire my museums, they also acquire my critique of their museums. And while I was happy that all my museums have been acquired by museums, I also wondered, what is going to remain with me. It is a big part of my life and that’s when I started to make these pocket museums,” explains Dayanita.
There is an interesting paradox about these boxes. At one level, they are 3000 mass-produced Museum Bhavans whereas on the other, with a different cloth cover, each box becomes a unique one. The aachar a fabric which collects all the ink, as the under cloth used in Ajrakh block printing, forms the cloth cover on each box.
“When these boxes arrived, on the spur of the moment, I wrote to Orhan Pamuk asking him, if I could exhibit it at Museum of Innocence, never expecting a reply. But he replied saying yes. So, I am exhibiting the pocket museum there on September 13. Can you imagine? Encouraged by his response, I thought let me be more daring and write to the Tate. They also responded positively. Tate is, in fact, making a five-minute film and hosting a conversation around pocket museum,” says the exuberant artiste, who will be showing Museum of Shedding at the 15th Istanbul Biennial, next month.
In the capacity of a viewer or owner of a pocket museum, one is accorded the power and choice regarding its positioning and placement, sequence and display, and in doing so, he or she unwittingly assumes the role of a curator. Dayanita feels a viewer with high level involvement, will find more stories. But before that a seminal process takes place on the editing table of Dayanita. The images taken from the exhaustive material on contact sheets, built over three decades, undergo ruthless editing to forge connections and narratives. The images which are part of these sets have never been seen before, though a few of these museums were part of KNMA showing. The black and white images keep altering and the museums keep feeding off each other to give rise to another one, especially Museum of Chance, which she calls, the mother museum.
At the time, when Dayanita was shooting factories, drawing rooms, old bookshops, printing press, portraits, libraries, photographs, libraries, she hadn’t even dreamt of working them into museums. They were quiet, meditative moments which beckoned her. The insular moments must flow into a narrative for which a gallery space wasn’t enough. In Steidl’s specially designed paper and printing, her stories found a perfect messenger.
MILESTONES
Dayanita’s first photo book was called “Zakir Hussain” which came out in 1986. She photographed the veteran tabla player in concert, at home, during travel. She considers him her mentor.
Another milestone in her career was “Myself Mona Ahmed”, which centred on transgender Mona Ahmed’s letters accompanied by her photographs by Dayanita. The book presented Mona Ahmed’s poignant life story.
Blue Book, Dream Villa, House of Love, Chairs, Privacy are some of her other seminal books.
She also considers her mother, Nony Singh who was also a great archivist like her as inspiration. In 2013, Dayanita made “Nony Singh: The Archivist” (2013), with photographs selected from the stacks of negatives and prints her mother had accumulated since childhood.
(Museum Bhavan will get unveiled at CMYK Store, M-75, GK-II, M Block Market on August 23, along with a discussion. Exhibition “Pocket Museum” will be on display at Bikaner House, Pandara Road, India Gate, New Delhi from August 9-24)
