India and the World

A landmark exhibition, and a collaboration between the British Museum and CSMVS. Two hundred objects were brought together to tell two stories at once: the influence India carried out into the world, and the global ideas that settled into India's own melting pot. The span ran from prehistory to the modern era. LDP lit that span as a journey through time. Beyond the careful handling of light-sensitive materials, the light itself carried the chronology: firelight tones in the prehistoric rooms, shifting subtly along the route until they arrived at the white fluorescent light of the modern age. The colour temperature was the timeline. The final section, on cultural representations of time, was set in a black box. There the artworks' own reflections were left to do the work — a small swirling cosmos forming within the dark. Its success opened the door to the more adventurous collaborations that followed.