Nony Singh’s Vasant Vihar bedroom becomes a museum at 90

A handwritten note on a bedroom door in a Vasant Vihar apartment reads: “NONY SINGH MUSEUM.” Inside, a double bed remains in place, a gaontakiyan lies across it, and framed black-and-white photographs by Nony Singh cover the walls.

The museum displays photographs of Singh’s family. One series shows her mother wearing her father’s clothes; another shows her sister seated with her sari spread across the floor. A portrait of Dayanita Singh as a young woman, photographed by her mother around 1981, hangs on one wall.

A family archive on the wall

Nony Singh, who recently turned 90, began collecting and arranging photographs when she was young. After marrying, she assembled a “Girlfriends Album” from photographs she found of her husband with former girlfriends. Her own image appears on its final page with the caption: “Hey, some respect for photography at least.”

A photograph of Dayanita as a baby, lying on a chaise longue, later appeared on the cover of *The Archivist*, Nony Singh’s book documenting her life through photographs.

Mother and daughter in art

Dayanita Singh invited guests to a preview of the museum with a WhatsApp message offering “dal chawal” at 7 pm. She and her mother spoke with artist-curator Andrea Anastasio, director of the Italian Cultural Centre, while guests sat around a table and on the bed beneath the photographs.

Nony Singh said she trusted Dayanita’s judgement when her daughter proposed creating a museum for the work at home. She said Dayanita’s work had also given her own photographic practice a wider reach.

“Mother and daughter in a jhappi of art,” Nony Singh said.

She recalled hand-painting some of Dayanita’s black-and-white photographs for a calendar, a collaboration that made her feel they had become one artist. Guests later gathered in the living room for moong dal and aloo gobhi beneath a wall of Nony Singh’s oil paintings.