South Asia Archive: Reclaiming beauty and identity in the subcontinent

Sanam Sindhi’s South Asia Archive is a rare cultural excavation gem without the colonial lilt. Founded in 2018, the archive offers a fresh, unmediated lens on the traditions of beauty, adornment, fashion and identity within South Asia and its diaspora. Moved by a deeply entrenched desire to challenge the boring pestilence of reductive framing, Sanam has built a living, breathing repository that captures the multifaceted wealth of South Asian aesthetics, from ornate jewellery and tattoo traditions to countercultural movements and iconography. 

“South Asia Archive was born out of my curiosity and desire to discover something beyond the reductive narrative and imagery of the Indian subcontinent that I had been accustomed to seeing my whole life,” Sanam tells Dazed MENA. “For many years, I had already been researching and collecting any obscure and subversive imagery and information I could find about South Asia and the diaspora, unsure of what I would do with everything I was gathering, but the archive is what really helped me synthesise all of it into a real a didactic expression.”

The archive radically defies the Eurocentric gaze that has long dominated global conversations about beauty and identity. The treasures Sanam collects—images spanning decades and continents—offer a tactile reimagining of South Asian representation. Be it reviving material from Bhopal’s marginalised communities or prodding at the root of street tattooing in India, Sanam is inviting viewers to consider South Asia as a kaleidoscope of histories, subcultures, and counternarratives. 

“I never thought it would reach people as far and wide as it has,” Sanam confesses, speaking of the account that has garnered over 20,000 followers, comments brimming with awe. “I’m deeply grateful that research and archiving are finally being valued as the unique and indispensable artistic practices they are because that shift in the zeitgeist is really what encouraged me to bring this project back.”

The project is a personal one for Sanam, who grew up first-generation Indian in America. The archivist grew keenly aware of the disconnect between the vibrant cultural traditions she inherited and the limiting, often whitewashed spectres of South Asian fashion in the media. While the archive began as a private obsession—with Sanam frantically sifting through books, museums, and the internet for forgotten fragments of South Asian artistry—it soon evolved into a public-facing platform. The archive nourished the appetites of young, diasporic audiences hungry for representation that felt authentic and all-encompassing as they were. 

“I hope to bridge the gap and foster a cross-cultural exchange between India/South Asia and the rest of the world,” Sanam delineates to Dazed MENA. “I think this region has a long history of being extracted from but never really respected or included in conversations about art or fashion. I hope to contribute to making work in and about India/South Asia that shows the depth and complexity of this place and its people and also pushes the creative landscape forward. But more importantly, I want art and fashion to be more accessible for young people here and for these industries to change their lives for the better in real, material ways.”

The work, though painstaking, is vital. Much of what Sanam unearths exists in extant fragments—unsourced photographs, undocumented histories, scattered like confetti with references that demand patience and discipline to piece together. It’s this process that makes the archive so captivating. Sanam’s posts are delayed acts of reclamation: it was through the South Asia Archive that she rediscovered Maharaja Ram Singh II’s photographs of his harem or the history of Indian aristocrats commissioning French Maisons like Cartier to redesign their jewels. The archive revealed anew otherwise overlooked communities, like Koovagam, Asia’s largest transgender festival. Through her research, Sanam is preserving and repositioning these cultural relics into contemporaneous dialogues.

As these global conversations open up, precipitated by work like Sanam’s, the archivist is noticing a perceptible shift in the global south’s creative scene, one unencumbered by Western imposition. “I think similar to South Asia, North Africa and Southwest Asia are also experiencing a new creative and artistic renaissance,” she observes. “I hope to see the incredible work being made there to expand beyond its borders and be recognised and platformed on a global stage without requiring a stamp of approval from the West.”

This renaissance is indeed brewing—and in its midst, Sanam finds herself in an attuned position. Having recently relocated to Bombay, she feels more connected than ever to the cultural fibres that inspire her work. “Moving to my homeland of India has felt like the defining moment—not just for my career, but my life as well,” Sanam states. “Living here has felt like I’ve found the missing puzzle piece, like all the gaps I felt existing in the diaspora have finally been filled. It’s also such an exciting time to be here as India’s burgeoning creative scene is disrupting tradition and carving out its own identity. I feel privileged to be a part of and hopefully contribute to this really special moment that is deeply expanding my understanding of this region, its future, and my relationship to it.”

Ever in business with temporality, Sanam’s concerns have shifted to the heritage of her work: “Lately, my process is deeply driven by the idea of legacy and what I want to leave behind after I’m gone,” the archivist remarks. “I think it’s only in the last year that my life’s purpose has really begun to take shape—finally having a grasp on that has made me obsessive and dedicated to alchemising that purpose into something real and meaningful.” While she focuses on establishing a tangible home for her archive in India, the world can anticipate further revelations and recontextualisations that fold time in on itself. Sanam’s efforts propel vital relics into a future becoming, reframing the dialogue around South Asian culture with renewed depth and lucidity.