October 1–December 20, 2026
Cohen Gallery, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
Opening Reception: Ocotber 1, 2026, 5:30 PM
Public Hours: Thursdays | 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

*According to University guidance, our buildings are open only to active Brown University ID holders outside of designated public hours (or during specified hours). Visitors without a Brown ID may visit during listed public gallery hours.

In her practice, Dayanita Singh experiments with form through photography, architecture, and books to create exhibitions. Using these mediums, Singh extends an invitation to audiences to question how books, and book-making, might transform a space into an exhibition. This show takes cues from Singh’s artist-led approach to exhibitions to explore the relationship between "making” and “reading.” With Singh’s Book Building (2022) as a blueprint, this exhibition analyzes book-making as an artistic practice, material form, and conceptual process.

Works in the exhibition span Singh’s career, including Book Building (2022), Blue Book (2009), File Room (2013), Museum of Chance (2014), and Sent a Letter (2008). The experimental forms of these books emphasize grids, sequences, and folds, which also play into the space of the gallery. While you move through the exhibition, you will be able to make a book that becomes its catalogue. You can also find portable pinhole viewfinders to see how the sun turns the gallery’s architecture into a camera, casting light and shadow throughout the space. The floorplan similarly attunes us to the gallery’s grids, echoing the forms within Singh’s books and those they make on display. Using Singh’s works as a lens, the exhibition asks: how can architecture, photography and books transform our relationship to institutional spaces and our role within them?

– Holly Shaffer | Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Director of Undergraduate Studies

Dayanita Singh (b. 1961, New Delhi) experiments with form through photo-graphy, architecture, and books to make exhibitions. Using these mediums, Singh invites audiences to question how books, and book-making, might transform spaces into exhibitions. Taking cues from Singh’s artist-led approach to exhibitions in Book Building (2022), this exhibition analyzes book-making as an artistic practice, material form, and conceptual process.

This exhibition was created in Museum of Possibilities, the History of Art and Architecture’s 2025 Practicum, by Miranda Cuozzo, Anna Douglas, Benet Ge, Nida Jaffer, Monaye Johnson, Verda Karaoğlu, Luvuyo Nyawose, Tristan Whalen, Chuyu Xiong, Joey Young, and Ray Zhang, with guidance from Dayanita Singh and Professor Holly Shaffer. The seminar and the exhibition were generously supported by the Brown Arts Institute, the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia.