The Offbeat Sari is a major exhibition celebrating the contemporary sari. It brings together over 50 of the finest saris of our time from designers, wearers and craftspeople in India. For Australian audiences, this is a rare insight into contemporary Indian fashion and its wide-reaching cultural impact.

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The sari has long reflected identity, social class, and taste, and remains an enduring part of life in India today. Conventionally a single piece of unstitched fabric wrapped around the body and draped in a variety of ways, the sari is literally and metaphorically fluid. This unfixed form has enabled it to morph and absorb changing cultural influences.

In recent years, the sari has been reinvented. Designers in India are experimenting with hybrid forms such as sari gowns and dresses, pre-draped saris and innovative materials such as steel. Young people in cities, who previously would have associated the sari with formalwear, can now be found wearing them with sneakers on their commutes to work.  Individuals are wearing the sari as an expression of resistance to social norms and activists are embodying it as an object of protest.

The Offbeat Sari shows how designers, wearers and craftspeople are reshaping the ways in which the sari is understood, designed, made and worn. The exhibition highlights the textile innovations and the social shifts driving the ongoing perception and presentation of the sari, both in India and in the broader global context.

The exhibition includes a wide range of saris and related ephemera, including couture pieces worn by celebrities from Bollywood to Hollywood alongside a range of styles seen on the streets of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and beyond, showing many of the ways the sari is being embraced anew.

Presented exclusively in New South Wales at Liverpool Powerhouse, The Offbeat Sari is a touring exhibition by the Design Museum , London. Conceived and curated by Priya Khanchandani.