Design curation in the Global South: Making product systems visible
In the absence of established institutional infrastructure, design curation in India has evolved into a practice that cuts across industrial history, cultural heritage, and public knowledge.
Design curation as a named discipline barely exists in India's institutional landscape. It is absorbed, instead, into adjacent fields — exhibition design, cultural programming, art curation, academic research — each of which captures a part of what the work actually involves, but none of which fully accounts for it.
Navigating this landscape over several years has led me to a practice structured around four interconnected pillars: the development sector, industrial products, cultural and private collections, and research and interpretation. These are not unrelated silos. They are different sites where the same fundamental question recurs — how do design and material culture shape the conditions of everyday life, and how do we make those shaping forces visible and legible to wider publics?
Translating industrial and product histories into accessible public narratives
Helping organisations articulate their product innovation legacies
Researching and interpreting private collections and material culture
Documenting indigenous knowledge systems and craft traditions
Contributing to conversations on development, sustainability, and consumption
As design scholar Dr. Donna Loveday argues, curating design is not simply about presenting finished objects. It involves revealing the processes, systems, and contexts through which design operates — from production and technology to culture, economics, and everyday life. In countries of the Global South, where these systems are still being written into institutional memory, that work becomes particularly consequential. The design curator's role is not only to display objects, but to make visible the networks through which design operates in society.
