The Offbeat Sari
We collaborated with Midlands Art Centre, the Design Museum and Studio Mutt to bring to fruition display furniture for the exhibition The Offbeat Sari - Indian Fashion Unravelled.
For the Birmingham show, our role within the team was to build and install the display furniture, interpreting the exhibition design conceived by Studio Mutt.
About the exhibition
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) proudly presents The Offbeat Sari: a major exhibition from the Design Museum, London. Celebrating the contemporary sari, it shows how designers, wearers and craftspeople are reshaping the ways in which the sari is understood, designed, made and worn in contemporary urban India.
The Offbeat Sari is the UK’s first large-scale exhibition to examine one of the world’s most recognisable garments in its 21st-century context, while experiencing the “most rapid reinvention in its 5,000-year history”.
Conventionally, a single piece of unstitched fabric, the sari has enduring appeal and a longstanding presence across India and South Asia today. Having once been viewed as too traditional or uncomfortable for everyday wear, especially by young people, the sari has been reenergised in recent years by a new generation of designers and wearers, who have employed design innovation to transform it into a canvas for contemporary trends, attitudes, expressions of identity and political sentiments. MAC’s showing of the exhibition sheds a rare spotlight on contemporary Indian fashion for Midlands audiences, bringing together around 60 examples of trailblazing saris from the past decade.
It is presented in the following sections:
Transformations highlights the work of designers in India who have fuelled experimentation with the sari in recent years. These innovators push boundaries by creating new genres and embracing the sari as an object of playful expression.
Identity and Resistance examines the wearer’s role in reforming the sari today. It shows how the sari is a powerful means of self-expression, with a focus on India in the broader context of South Asia and diasporic communities. Visitors will see how the sari can reflect a diverse range of voices and personas, empower the female body, channel political movements and enable individual identities to flourish.
New Materialities looks at the sari as a textile, and how it forms a rich canvas for the incredible creativity of craftspeople in contemporary India. It shows how makers and designers collaborate across a range of techniques to transform how the sari is made today ,drawing upon India’s profound textile histories as they pave the way for its future.
Priya Khanchandani, lead curator of The Offbeat Sari, said:
“Capturing the essence of a ubiquitous garment with such a profound history in a single exhibition may seem outrageous, since there are an endless number of stories about the sari to be told. The Offbeat Sari focuses on its contemporary reinvention, a story that is little-known beyond South Asia. Designers are playing boldly with its materiality, while wearers are transforming it into radical, everyday clothing - a means of self-expression and resistance.
For me and so many others, the sari holds deep personal and cultural resonance, but it’s also a living canvas for imagination, reflecting the energy and plurality at the heart of South Asian culture. I’ve been moved and left in wonder while researching this exhibition and am honoured it can play a part in sharing the sari’s contemporary story with the world. It’s a huge pleasure to work with MAC to bring The Offbeat Sari to Birmingham, a city shaped by the history and culture of one of the UK’s largest South Asian communities.”
Deborah Kermode, CEO and Artistic Director at Midlands Arts Centre, said:
“We are thrilled that our ongoing partnership with the Design Museum has led to MAC’s first major fashion exhibition, and one that is so joyful and vibrant in style. You don’t have to be a fashion connoisseur to enjoy it - there is something for everyone, with contemporary saris from the worlds of fashion, performance, sport and political protest on display.
The Offbeat Sari has also inspired a stunning programme of performances, workshops and events at MAC this summer. From a local exhibition inviting people across the Midlands to share their own sari stories, to a colourful wedding-style dance celebration and Bollywood concert, we can’t wait to share our summer Sari Season with audiences from Birmingham and beyond.”
The Offbeat Sari is a touring exhibition by the Design Museum, London and conceived and curated by Priya Khanchandani (former Head of Curatorial and now independent curator). MAC is currently the only UK tour venue. The exhibition has been shown in London and Amsterdam.
Photography courtesy of the MAC, The Offbeat Sari, 2025. Photographer, Tegen Kimbley
