The Imaginary Institution of India. Art 1975–1998

Daly & Lyon (Wayne Daly and Claire Lyon) were responsible for creating the overall graphic identity of the exhibition The Imaginary Institution of India, Art 1975–1998, on display at the Barbican from October 5, 2024, until January 5, 2025. This includes the exhibition graphics, a free paperback guidebook, and a hardcover catalogue of the show, published by Prestel (288 pages, 22×30 cm, ISBN 978–3–7913–7769–8).

All of the media was typeset in HAL Timezone by HAL Typefaces, while the sans serif numbers in the guidebook and in the exhibition design were typeset in Carte Antique by Sean Kuhnke, soon to be published by Abyme. The exhibition design and architecture were created by Apparata. This exhibition is organized by the Barbican in collaboration with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. The photos were taken by Thomas Adank.

Description of the exhibition by the Barbican:

A landmark group exhibition of art made in response to India’s changing cultural-political landscape during pivotal years.

Featuring artwork by over 30 Indian artists, this major exhibition is bookended by two transformative events in India’s history: Indira Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. The fraught period between these years was marked by social upheaval, economic collapse, and rapid urbanisation.

Within this turbulence, ordinary life continued, and artists made work that distilled historically significant episodes as well as intimate moments and shared experiences. Across a range of media, the vivid, urgent works on show – about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste, community, protest – are deeply personal documents from a period of tremendous change.

This is the first institutional exhibition to cover these definitive years, with many works never before seen in the UK.