Curator Talk: Priya Khanchandani

Please note: Unfortunately the curator of The Offbeat Sari, Priya Khanchandani, can no longer travel to Australia due to global conditions affecting air travel. This session will remain in-person in the Function Centre, however Priya will be live-streamed.

Join us at Bunjil Place for a talk by London-based writer and curator of The Offbeat Sari, Priya Khanchandani.

Enjoy chai and a conversation that explores the themes and ideas behind the exhibition, offering deeper insight into the designers and saris that make The Offbeat Sari such a unique blend of fashion, design, culture and expression. Join us for this rare opportunity to engage with the curator during our opening weekend celebration. 

This talk is Auslan interpreted.

About the Curator

Priya Khanchandani is a design curator and writer, educated at the Royal College of Art and at Cambridge University and now working independently. Until recently the Head of Curatorial at the Design Museum in London, her projects include the celebrated exhibition The Offbeat Sari with an associated book published with Thames and Hudson. She also curated Design Museum exhibitions Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems, Yinka Ilori: Parables for Happiness and the blockbuster Amy: Beyond the Stage. Her biennial projects center around interrogating narratives of identity and belonging through re-examining the existing canon of design, such as co-curating Pattern as Politics with Sam Jacob at Lisbon Architecture Triennial, and curating State of Indigo, the India Pavilion at London Design Biennial. Previously the first female Editor in Chief of celebrated architecture magazine Icon, Khanchandani was nominated for Fiona Macpherson New Editor of the Year.

About the Exhibition

The Offbeat Sari is a major exhibition celebrating the contemporary sari. This exhibition unravels its numerous forms, demonstrating the sari to be a metaphor for the layered and complex definitions of India today. It brings together the finest saris of our time from designers, wearers and craftspeople in India.

In recent years, the sari has been reinvented. Designers are experimenting with hybrid forms such as sari gowns and dresses, pre-draped saris and innovative materials such as steel. People in cities who used to associate the sari with dressing up can now be found wearing saris and sneakers on their commutes to work. Individuals are wearing the sari as an expression of resistance to social norms and activists are embodying it as an object of protest.

Presented exclusively in Victoria at Bunjil Place, The Offbeat Sari is a touring exhibition by the Design Museum, London. Conceived and curated by Priya Khanchandani.

Photo: Suzanne Zhang