Mumbai-born, London-based designer Nipa Doshi has unveiled two deeply personal works at NGV International as the 2025 MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission recipient.
CommunityA Room of Her Own at NGV
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22 October 2025
Celebrated for an aesthetic that engages with her Indian heritage, Doshi presents A Room of My Own — a handcrafted, multidimensional cabinet that sits between shrine and dressing table — and a debut, hand-painted typeface that extends her spatial thinking into graphic form.
The cabinet draws on the Indian kaavad tradition, which features portable shrines that fold open to reveal stories and rituals. Here, Doshi transforms that idea into a space for care and contemplation. Open its doors and a series of abstract portraits come into view - an avant-garde 1970s actress, a neighbourhood matriarch, a nurse who supported the designer at a vulnerable time — women whose qualities shaped Doshi’s life and career. The effect is intimate, inviting the viewer into an inner world where memory, identity and function are inseparable.
Across the gallery walls, Doshi’s new typeface appears at large scale as letters, numbers and symbols that are both language and composition, graphic forms reminiscent of two-dimensional plans and diagrams. An accompanying moving-image work interleaves animations of the typeface with footage of the cabinet, creating a dialogue between object and idea, utility and imagination.
Doshi’s practice is widely recognised. With industrial designer Jonathan Levien, she co-founded the studio Doshi Levien in 2000; the duo was named Designer of the Year at the 2015 Elle Deco International Design Awards. In 2024, Doshi received an MBE for services to design. Her work has been shown at the V&A in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and MoMA in New York, now joined by this Melbourne world-premiere commission.
The MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission, supported through MECCA’s social change initiative M-POWER, is the first and only initiative of its kind in Australia, championing opportunities for women and girls in the arts and design and addressing historical imbalances in museum collections. Doshi is the fourth designer to be honoured, creating a collectible work with a strong narrative that embodies her values as a woman in design.
For Melbourne’s design-curious community, this is a rare opportunity to encounter new work from a global leader up close, and to reflect on the rituals that shape our own daily spaces.
On now until 1 April 2026.
LEARN MORE - https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/mecca-x-ngv-women-in-design-commission-nipa-doshi/
