Exhibition Review: Dayanita Singh: Dancing With My Camera
Dayanita Singh, Go Away Closer, 2007
Written by Michelle O’Malley
Photo edited by Christiana Nelson
The Gropius Bau is presenting Dancing With My Camera, the first major survey of internationally esteemed photographer Dayanita Singh’s impressive career, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. Adverse to the idea of having her work “fossilized” in a museum, Singh wants her work to be able to be moved and adjusted in spaces so that a whole other element is added, one that is reflective of the fact that the artist is living these moments. The artist is, after all, alive and so are her photographs. In viewing photography as a raw material from which a variety of expressions may be released, Singh presents her photographs in a multitude of forms, varying from “mobile-museums” to “book-objects,” so that audiences may actively participate in every photographic experience.
Dancing With My Camera showcases the most significant of Singh’s photographs from the very beginning, I am as I am (1999) and Go Away Closer (2007), to the present, Let’s See (2021), Museum of Dance (Mother Loves to Dance) (2021), Museum of Tanpura (2021), Mona Montages (2021) and most recently, Painted Photos (2021-2022). In compiling all her works into one immersive experience, Singh’s distinctive artistic desires are slowly revealed to viewers.
Dayanita Singh, Mona Montage, 2021
Dayanita Singh, Museum of Tanpura, 2021. (© Photo by Luca Girardini)
Dubbing herself an “offset artist,” Singh considers the presentation of photographs to be equally as important as the images captured. By housing her images in wooden structures on wheels, the artist is able to achieve the familiar artistic pursuit of moving her audience, but in a maybe not so mainstream manner. Placing her works on “mobile museums” the artist quite literally encourages viewers to move with the art, rather than be moved by it.
Housed within these photographic enclosures are photographs of a variety of people Singh has come across in her life, captured in black and white, their most natural, personal moments conveyed. Singh’s ability to “edit with emotion” shines through, even in black and white. Her subjects range from her early career mentor, the highly skilled tabla player Ustad Zakir Hussain, to her closest friend, a transgender individual named Mona Ahmed, dancing in the cemetery she is now buried in, to the artist’s own mother dancing with classical Indian dancers and Bollywood choreographers at family weddings, every photo depicting an intimate scene from Singh’s lifelong relationships. Reminiscent of the sensation of paging through a family photo album, viewers can’t help but reflect on the content of their own personal photo albums.
Dayanita Singh, Museum of Dance (Mother Loves to Dance), 2021. (© Photo by Luca Girardini)
Dayanita Singh, Museum of Chance, 2013
Dayanita Singh, Zakir Hussain Maquette, 2019. (© Photo by Luca Girardini)
“After looking through an archive of four decades, I realised it barely matters what I photographed and how I photographed,” Singh reflects. “What matters is that I photographed and photographed relentlessly, often the same places, people, year after year, decade after decade. That is the work.”
Dayanita Singh is the 2022 winner of the prestigious Hasselblad Award. She is the first recipient of the award from South Asia and will receive the award this upcoming October.
Dancing With My Camera is on display at the Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany through August 7, 2022. To view more of Dayanita Singh’s works, visit dayanitasingh.net.
