Expanding Agency, a research initiative of architectural historian Kathleen James Chakraborty from the University of Dublin reaches Bangalore International Centre, Domlur, with a five-day travelling exhibition this September.
The exhibition presents the stories and contributions of historically underrepresented and unrepresented women and racialised communities across the globe, and includes the narratives of Indian women from the 20th century. Told through the medium of photographs, drawings, archives and written narratives, they tell the untold stories of modern architecture.
Beyond exhibiting a few key historical narratives from their archives, Expanding Agency and Archival Silences also hosted a series of workshops and panel discussions inviting participants from across Bengaluru to contribute from their own experiences and narratives.
Sarah Melssen, co-curator of the event, recalls how her labour workshop on September 5, saw participants from various backgrounds including architects, architectural historians, researchers, social workers and NGOs engage with women construction workers.
The travelling exhibition
This initiative took the form of a dual exhibition curated by Ishita Shah and Meenakshi Jayan from Women of Vasthukala Archives project as well as Sarah Melsens as Architectural Historian from the Omitted from History project. Drawing from multiple research projects, Expanding Agency and Archival Silences focused on specific fields such as gender, race and dissemination. Their central intention is to explore the intricacies of gender in the built environment which transcends women in various roles and their contributions to the field.
Ishita says, “There is a marked absence of women’s labour whether she is a construction worker or a practitioner. It might not just be a lack of representation in the archives; women themselves do not realise that what they are creating is a knowledge system.”
And herein lies the reason behind this exhibition, “to bring forward the experiences that reflect how women have actually shaped architecture as a profession.”
As one looks around the showcased narratives, the story of Sister Nesta Fitzgerald of Lombard Convent pops up as one of the first women to become a qualified architect in Ireland. Her story is followed by that of Grace Cope amid discussions between psychology and architecture. And Lin Huiyin who travelled to the University of Pennsylvania from China to study architecture in 1924, is followed by various other overlooked stories from different parts of the world.
Exhibits at Expanding Agency and Archival Silences
| Photo Credit:
C Madan Mohan
India’s experiences and archival silencing
Present among the globally featured narratives is Mumbai’s burgeoning film industry of the 1930s and its influence on domesticity and the mass media influence on women towards modernism. This collaboration between research practitioners, curators, and architectural historians takes us further into the underrepresented narratives through its extended exhibition, Archival Silences, which features region-specific histories of women architects, including those from the south India.
In a separately organised part of the exhibition, curators from Women of Vastukala Archive bring in the lived experience of women practitioners through a component of archival silences. Within this part of the showcases are the exhibits contributed by prominent women practitioners from across India whose works are often underrepresented. This part of the exhibition also has features from Bengaluru’s women architects.
A few samples by Neelam Manjunath of CGBMT, Bengaluru, is among the works in Archival Silences. “When looking at the deeper research and works of Neelam Manjunath, they give you a sense of her relationship with the Toda community and the knowledge exchange that happened between the two,” says Ishita, observing how architects and architecture often transcend theory and singularity.
Exhibits at Expanding Agency and Archival Silences
| Photo Credit:
C Madan Mohan
Stories like this exist across the globe and even more so in India; this exhibition and its curators are working towards highlighting them and giving them a stage. Dr. Abha Subba Rao, a public health researcher and visitor to the exhibition shares her views. “My work has largely focused on women construction workers who travel seasonally to urban areas and travel back after work, so coming here helped me connect with other happenings in the field,” she said.
While the exhibition leans towards academic discourses, Sarah Melssen’s concern towards finding a more creative and accessible method to be able to accommodate larger audiences and include the construction workers in discussions seems justified.
The exhibition is on till September 8 at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur. For more details visit bangaloreinternationalcentre.org
Published – September 07, 2026 07:31 pm IST
