Be like salt, 2026. Video still. Priyadarshini Ravichandran © the artist

Archive Frictions is a knowledge exchange project bringing together artists, researchers, museums and universities in the UK and India to explore how photographic archives are discovered, interpreted and reimagined.

At the heart of the project is a remarkable archive of photographs discovered by PhD researcher Alexandra Gow in the archives of the National Galleries Scotland. Believed to have been taken in the Indian subcontinent in the early to mid-1900s, the photographs offer an unique glimpse of women in a university setting. In contrast to many stereotypical representations of India from the period, these images focus on women in educational spaces and are marked by an unusually intimate photographic style.

The archive becomes a starting point for new artistic responses by Steffi Klenz, based in the UK, and Priyadarshini Ravichandran, based in India. Through their respective practices, the artists engage with the historical photographs to consider how women are represented, remembered and made visible, and how photographic archives can shift when viewed across different times and cultural contexts.

At MAP, the project will be on show in the Sasken Multimedia Gallery.  The Gallery-on-Demand exhibition of Archive Frictions is also on view at the Museum of Art & Photography’s dedicated cultural spaces at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru.

Archive Frictions is created in collaboration between the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), in Bengaluru, the National Galleries Scotland (NGS), in Edinburgh, and Fast Forward: Women in Photography with support from British Council and the University of Creative Arts.

To find out more please go to the direct link.