Venice opens state archive for first time for Dayanita Singh's exhibition

When Dayanita Singh’s exhibition, “Archivio” (Italian for archive), opened at the Archivio di Stato in Venice last week, it marked a first not just for the artist, but for the venue itself. For the first time in history, the state archive opened its doors to the public as an exhibition space. The 13th century monastery building made an exception for Singh, given her long engagement with archives as living, evolving entities.

 

Archivio, which will run until August end during the Venice Biennale, brings together two strands of Singh’s work: Her sustained exploration of institutional archives, and a 25-year photographic engagement with Italy. Curated by Andrea Anastasio, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi, history and people.

 

Anastasio’s association with Singh goes back over three decades. “I’ve known Dayanita since 1992,” he says, days before flying off to Venice. “Over the years, I’ve seen her work evolve, and I’ve also seen how Italy has been a recurring presence in her practice.”

 

That presence began in the late 1990s, when Singh first travelled through the country, photographing not only its archives but also its everyday textures, from homes and streets to objects, and people. Yet, despite the depth of this engagement, the work had never been brought together in a single exhibition. “At a certain point, we realised she had been photographing in Italy for 25 years, but this body of work had never been shown as a whole,” Anastasio says. “That became the starting point.”

 

For Anastasio, the choice of venue — the layered interiors of the Archivio di Stato, a repository of centuries-old documents rarely accessible to the public — was symbolic. “Dayanita has spent years photographing archives, so the idea of presenting her work inside a state archive felt very natural,” he says. “The director welcomed the idea, and it’s quite remarkable that visitors will be able to enter the space for the first time through this exhibition.”

 

Archivio extends into a broader visual and conceptual field. Photographs of architecture, interiors, flowers, sculptures, and personal encounters appear alongside archival imagery, creating what Anastasio describes as “an archive within an archive”. He adds, “It’s also an archive of travel, of all the meetings, friendships, and moments that made these photographs possible.”

 

The exhibition reflects Singh’s longstanding interest in the idea of the archive not as a static repository, but as something fluid and generative. Images made in Italy over the past 25 years are placed in dialogue with her studies of archives in India and elsewhere, creating a network of associations rather than a linear narrative.

 

For Anastasio, this approach is central to the exhibition’s meaning. “What I find very interesting in her work is that the archive is not a dead place,” he says. “It’s an ongoing process, something that has to be experienced.”

 

This emphasis on experience is reflected in the display itself. Rather than being fixed on walls, many of the photographs are presented in freestanding structures, allowing viewers to move through them and encounter images in shifting sequences. “Each image changes depending on what you see before and after it,” Anastasio says. “In a way, the exhibition becomes an archive of the viewers’ own experience.”

 

The project also draws on Singh’s exploration of the “museum-as-book” and “book-as-museum”. These are formats that allow images to be rearranged and recontextualised. In Archivio, this idea expands into the architectural space of the archive, where the act of viewing becomes a form of editing.

 

Anastasio sees the exhibition as part of a larger inquiry into how cultural memory is constructed. “There is something very powerful in the act of ordering, containing, and protecting images,” he says. “But at the same time, Dayanita’s work keeps everything open. It allows for movement, for reinterpretation.”

 

The exhibition’s collaborative dimension is equally significant. Over the years, Singh’s work in Italy has been shaped by a network of friends, scholars, and institutions who introduced her to places and people. Anastasio himself has been part of this process, connecting her with museums, collectors, and local communities. “This work exists because of those encounters,” he says. “So it felt important that the exhibition also reflects that network.”

 

Singh’s presence at the Venice Biennale context is itself notable. She has participated in the Biennale three times, “an uncommon distinction for any artist, and particularly rare for an Indian practitioner,” says Anastasio.

 

Following its run in Venice, Archivio will travel to several institutions in Italy, including the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome (September-October), Museum of Oriental Art, or MAO, in Turin (November-December), and finally the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi in January 2027.