Dayanita Singh. ARCHIVE: archives and museums on display at the State

Dayanita Singh. ARCHIVE: archives and museums on display at the State Archives of Venice

Indian photographer Dayanita Singh presents an exhibition that foregrounds archives as physical spaces and repositories of collective memory. Through mostly black-and-white images, the show investigates how books, shelves and photographic holdings affirm identity, contradictions and the passage of time within cultural institutions.

Dates: 17 April - 31 July 2026.

Curated by Andrea Anastasio, the exhibition opens at the State Archives of Venice, marking the venue's first use as an exhibition space. The photographic sequence recalls the idea of the archive as a portable museum: images presented like pages of a photobook, often without captions, where order and disorder converse on the documentary and aesthetic value of the photographs.

• Main venue: State Archives of Venice (exhibition 17/04/2026–31/07/2026).
• Subsequent venues: National Etruscan Museum Villa Giulia (Rome), MAO - Museum of Oriental Art (Turin), Italian Cultural Institute (New Delhi).
• Focus: archives, museums, collective memory, black-and-white photography, the photobook as narrative form.

Singh's practice often centres on the photobook as a curatorial device: books that function as independent narrative sequences, turning archives and collections into "portable museums." Born in New Delhi in 1961, her work blends documentary inquiry with inventive exhibition strategies; she received the Hasselblad Award in 2022.

Visitor note: expect a visual itinerary prioritising rhythm, sequencing and the atmosphere of archival spaces, where the material presence of books and papers often becomes part of the experience.