First major UK exhibition focussing on the contemporary sari to open at the Design Museum

The first large-scale exhibition in the UK to examine the contemporary Indian sari opens at the Design Museum in May 2023.

Image: Natasha Poonawalla arrives on the red carpet for The Met Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2022. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI/Alamy Live News.

The Offbeat Sari, opening in May, will be the first large-scale exhibition in the UK to focus on the contemporary sari in India. It is curated by the Design Museum’s Head of Curatorial Priya Khanchandani. The show will bring together over 90 examples of trailblazing saris made over the past decade, nearly all of which will be on loan from designers and studios across India and have never been seen in Britain before.

The exhibition will show how designers, wearers and craftspeople are reshaping the ways in which the sari is understood, designed, made and worn in contemporary urban India. It will present the sari as a site for design innovation, an expression of identity and resistance, and a crafted object carrying layers of new materialities.

Image: Holidaze, 2020. Norblack Norwhite. Photo Bikramjit Bose.

The sari has today been elevated as a fashion item and has emerged as a canvas for contemporary trends and attitudes. Designers in India are experimenting with hybrid forms such as sari gowns, pre-draped saris, and innovative materials such as steel. Wearers are embodying the sari as a vessel for dynamism rather than pageantry. Individuals are wearing the sari as an expression of resistance to social norms, and activists are embodying it as an object of protest. Young people in cities – who previously associated the sari with dressing up – can now be found wearing saris and sneakers on their commutes to work.

Visitors will see the immense capacity of the sari to reflect a diverse range of voices and personas, how it can empower the female body, and a how it enables individual identities to flourish

Location: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, Kensington, London W8 6AG. Date: 19 May – 17 September 2023. Price: from £6.30/£12.60 (Child/Adult).