Museum of Tanpura

Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi in 1961 and studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and the International Center of Photography in New York. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; Hayward Gallery, London; the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2013 she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. Bookmaking is central to Singh's practice. Her books with Steidl include Privacy (2004), Chairs (2005), Go Away Closer (2007), Sent a Letter (2007), Dream Villa (2010), File Room (2013), Museum of Chance (2014), Museum Bhavan (2017)-Book of the Year at the 2017 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards and winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Award for Artist's Book-and Zakir Hussain Maquette (2019). Singh is the 2022 Hasselblad Award recipient.

In the early 1980s, her very first camera in hand, Dayanita Singh traveled throughout India for six winters with the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. At his side, she had the privilege of photographing several great classical musicians, creating an extensive image archive of them on stage and backstage, in their homes and on the faithful bus which brought them from concert to concert. When the time came for Singh to edit her work into a book, she chose to focus on the tanpura, a long-necked, four-stringed drone instrument which evokes and supports a musician's voice, both during performance and the process of daily practice riyaz. Museum of Tanpura celebrates the tanpura as a musician's constant companion, the environments and relationships which bring music into being, and embodies what Singh sees as her greatest learning from all the performers she befriended-the rigor and aesthetics of riyaz.