Dayanita Singh's 'Museum of Machines' at MAST Bologna

Dayanita Singh, born in New Delhi in 1961, presents a major solo exhibition at MAST in Bologna titled 'Museum of Machines,' running until January 8, 2017. The show features works from her series 'Blue Book,' her first color work, which she discovered by accident through a film error. Singh designs not only the images but also their display structures, including boxes, containers, and cabinets. The exhibition includes 'Museum of Chance,' a book with 44 different covers, each housed in a folding wooden structure with leather suitcases evoking early 20th-century British India. Curated by Urs Stahel, the show draws on two photographic traditions: the typological photography of the Bechers in Germany and industrial photography in post-1947 India. Singh's recent work has been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hayward Gallery in London, Museum Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, and Fundación Mapfre in Madrid. Her earlier book 'Privacy' portrayed India's wealthy interiors, moving beyond colonial and disaster-focused perspectives.