Ongoing Conversations: Dayanita Singh and Stephanie Rosenthal

Their first exhibition together was 2013, Go Away Closer at the Hayward Gallery in London, which saw the development of Singh’s “Museums“. For the 2016 Biennale of Sydney, curated by Rosenthal, Singh created what she refers to as her “most important work”, Suitcase Museum. In this talk they reflect on the three years of preparation and collaboration that led to Singh’s first comprehensive retrospective.

“Singh directs and choreographs the movement of her visitors by creating an architecture with her structures and photographs. She invites her audience to walk around a panel and continue onwards; to sit down; even to lay down. As an audience we are constantly invited to “wander” through Singh’s work. […] In a bodily sense, I feel moved around, activated, when looking at Singh’s work.” — Stephanie Rosenthal

Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi, India. She studied Visual Communication at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Dayanita Singh: Pothi Khana, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2021); Museum Bhavan, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2017). She is the 2022 recipient of the Hasselblad Award.

Stephanie Rosenthal is the Director of the Gropius Bau. Here, she has curated internationally acclaimed exhibitions such as Wu Tsang: There is no nonviolent way to look at somebody (2019), Garden of Earthly Delights (2019) and Otobong Nkanga: There’s No Such Thing as Solid Ground (2020).