Exhibit review: Dayanita Singh: Museum Bhavan, Tokyo, Japan

Dayanita Singh:  Museum Bhavan
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

According to the bio provided by the museum, Ms Singh is a well-known photographer who began her career doing commercial work before "retiring" to develop her own projects, a retrospective of which made up this exhibit. Included was a documentary series on Indian eunuchs, on which she has published at least two books, perhaps the most direct and honest work on display, images which spoke of a need to share her witness clearly and unambiguously.  The remainder of the exhibit consisted of two installations, which the artist refers to as Museums, including a series of books, called Pocket Museums, that fold out accordion-like to reveal a group of images arranged in themes that unfortunately weren’t terribly obvious. Seven of these were presented in frames up to a meter long, each with its own title, with copies on sale in the gift shop.  Other Museums were presented as collages arranged in large wooden frames, featuring images of a type in which I am interested – architecture, still life, textures of everyday life – and may have better appreciated in a different context.  Apart from the museum on women, and another on files (consisting of images of rooms stacked top to bottom with paper files), I didn’t see how the images in the other Museums hung together, what kind of stories they were attempting to tell.  Perhaps I wasn’t trying hard enough.  Or perhaps I was trying too hard.  The most difficult piece of work in the exhibit consisted of 20-30 images of a box wrapped in red cloth, all shot with the same set-up, with no change in perspective, framing, or exposure.  The box was wrapped, shot, unwrapped, rewrapped, and shot again. Over and over.  Close inspection, the description notes, reveals small differences in how the box was wrapped.  This is the kind of work that might indulge the image maker’s experimental impulse, but is perhaps best left in the photographer’s private collection. Photography in the exhibit was prohibited.  The two images here are copies of the TOP Musuem's flyer. This is not an exhibit I would especially recommend and not one that I would visit again.

Dayanita Singh's website:  
https://dayanitasingh.org/

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum announcement:
https://topmuseum.jp/e/contents/exhibition/index-2779.html

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