Nia Thandapani is an independent design historian and practicing graphic designer based in Bangalore. Her interests lie in colonial and post-independence design history in the Indian subcontinent and United Kingdom. Her work engages with imperialism’s presence within museum and heritage spaces, and on design practice and its outcomes. Nia is one part of Chandigarh Chairs, a collaborative research project which offers a critique of the current narrative surrounding Chandigarh’s modernist furniture and its removal from the city, and aims to build and support research on the furniture’s Indian design history.
The Chandigarh Chair. Reflections on revival for darknlight.com
The many visits I made to Bangalore’s now-closed New Government Electrical Factory (NGEF) were always preceded by a barely masked flurry of anticipation. Each time I’d convince myself, and those I’d drag along with me, of the new functional necessity demanding yet another trip. My husband and I had recently moved to Bangalore, and needed to outfit our two-bedroom apartment with a few more items than the lone bed we’d shipped from Delhi.
Going Once: Chandigarh’s Modernist Furniture at Auction, Zine
Mixed media zine, produced in batches of 3, exploring the key themes of the Chandigarh Chairs collaborative research project.
Talk: Chandigarh Chairs & Design History: What’s the point?
Talk SPA Bhopal Department of Design, April 2022
Reading Girls Zine
Work-in-progress zine-archive sharing some of the research materials from the Reading Girl project.
Distant Fellowship: William Morris & South Asia
The Reading Girl: Children’s Books and Defining Childhood in mid 20th Century Tamil Nadu
Talk for University for the Creative Arts, Farnham | November 2021
More Markets, More Movement, Less Truth: Chandigarh's Modernist Furniture and the Market for Mid-century Modern
Paper delivered at Ius Commune Conference Maastricht | November 2021
Modernist Design: From Chandigarh to Christie's
EPOCH Magazine | Issue 4, June 2021
Ongoing Research: Chandigarh Chairs
Ongoing research in collaboration with Petra Seitz and Gregor Wittrick
chandigarhchairs.com
Talk: Chandigarh Chairs: Towards a Critical Design History
Recent talk for the Bangalore International Centre on our ongoing research into the problematic narrative of Chandigarh’s modernist furniture.
‘Every Person His or Her Book’: 20th Century Tamil Children’s Book Design
A design history of the Tamil children’s book: 1920 to 1970
The Materiality of Abuse
I always enter the V&A from the tunnel entrance. As I ascend the steps to ground level and sunlight, a single imposing sculpture is positioned so that the V created by the strip lighting meets at the groin of a towering female nude.
Photographing the Adivasi people of the Nilgiris: The Museum and the Art School
This essay considered how the photograph ‘Cassevaroo woman’, and the collection of twenty-one prints to which this photograph belongs, entered the V&A collection and the ways in which they represent distinct ways of looking at Adivasi people.
Sign of the Times: Documenting Chennai’s Hand-painted Signage
