Art spaces are always welcomed in Goa as these venues encourage Goans to look beyond the
ordinary and finds gems in art. The Project Café, Goa is a 130-year-old
Portuguese villa in Assagao that is founded by Drasty Shah and Ekta Chopra and
which will have a peculiar touch of four segments – food, design, retail and
experience. After their launch exhibition featuring works by artists like Ruchi
Bakshi Sharma, Jagrut Raval, Nidhi Khurana, and Thomas Louis, The Project Café,
Goa is presenting Museum Bhavan in collaboration with ace bookmaker Dayanita
Singh.
Goans got a glimpse of Dayanita’s work very recently at the
Serendipity Festival of Arts that took place in December 2017 and a section of
the overall exhibition featured her Museum Bhavan project. Her art makes you a
curator of her work as all you have to do is acquire the box of images in the
form of a book and have your own openings either at home or wherever you
travel.
Dayanita Singh is an artist who works with photography as her
medium. Through her latest work, Museum Bhavan, she has found her form in a
book which makes it easy to access the pocket museum. A unique handmade box
holds within it nine miniature concertina books that turn into exhibitions and
a book of conversations. The images in Museum Bhavan are grouped into chapters
in visual stories like ‘Little Ladies Museum’, ‘Ongoing Museum’ and ‘Museum of
Machines’. The books are folded out into accordion-like concertinas, which can
be opened up and kept on display in a limited space, changing a book into an
exhibition. A total of 3000 of these boxes were specially crafted in India and
were then shipped to Steidl, her long time publisher/collaborator in Germany.
Dayanita studied Visual Communication at the National Institute
of Design in Ahmedabad and Documentary Photography at the International Center
of Photography in New York and has published thirteen books. Her works were
launched at the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul and have been to various
museums like Bildband, Berlin, Lebal Books, Paris, Micamera, Milan and Tate
Modern in London in 2017. With Museum Bhavan, Dayanita has created a space
between publishing and the museum. Art can be found anywhere and if not in a print
hanging on a wall, it can be in a book without diminishing its value.
Drasty Shah and Ekta Chopra, Co-founders at The Project Café
launched The Project Café Art Spaces in Goa. The art space is a homely sanctum
for artists, designers and performers to contemplate, converse, create and
collaborate. Drasty Shah, CCO at The Project Café says, “I am elated to host
Museum Bhavan at our new space at Assagao. We are the disseminators of design
and art, presented along with hospitality.” The Project Café features a quaint
outdoor café and restaurant featuring healthy cuisine, pieces of art and design
that are curated to blend with the surroundings. The Project Café will also
play host to performance artists, seasoned professionals and fresh talents.
The
Pocket Museum will be on display from January 5 to March 15, 2018, at The
Project Café- Goa, Assagao
