Museum of Dance

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 recipient of the 2018 ICP Infinity Award for Artist's Book-and Zakir Hussain Maquette (2019).

Beginning with Museum of Chance (2015) and most elaborately expressed in her award-winning Museum Bhavan (2017), Dayanita Singh has long created museums in book form, little offset symphonies that create a fluid space between the museum/gallery and publishing. Now, in Museum of Dance. Mother Loves to Dance, Singh collects all the images of people dancing she made in the 1980s and '90s-from her mother Nony Singh, her friend and collaborator Mona Ahmed (subject of Singh's 2001 visual novel Myself Mona Ahmed), to classical dancers and the renowned Bollywood choreographer Masterji. Published to coincide with her traveling retrospective "Dancing with the Camera" beginning in March 2022, this book is Singh's tribute to dance as well as her exploration of photography and bookmaking as metaphorical forms of dance-where rehearsed and spontaneous rhythms combine through intuition in unpredictable ways.