Matchbox Momentos

Created by artist Harshit Agrawal in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture (GAC) and his collaborators Imaginative Identity Creators, GAC partners Museum of Art & Photography and Tasveer Ghar.
Play Matchbox Momentos

How can emerging technologies help showcase the unique beauty, stories, visual language and history of Indian cultural artifacts?

This was the starting point for Mumbai-based artist, Harshit Agrawal, during his residency with Google Arts & Culture Lab.
Harshit created this playful interactive experiment to celebrate Indian nostalgia and Gautam Hemmady’s matchbox art collection – the largest collection in India.

This residency was in collaboration with Museum of Art & Photography, who Gautam donated his collection to and Tasveer Ghar, the South Asian archivists, who provided the digital archive of Gautam’s collection for the purpose of this experiment.

About the Experiment
Discover and collect up to 342 rare snapshots of India’s cultural history across 19 themed journeys. Each board has 19 matchbox artworks to collect. Including a special edition collectible matchbox artwork. The special edition collectible is created by the artist Harshit Agrawal, inspired by Gautam Hemmady’s original matchboxes and generated with the help of Google AI.

Harshit invites you to celebrate his Indian cultural heritage and step into the footsteps of late collector Gautam Hemmady. Journey India’s famous bazaars to build your own matchbox art collection in an interactive story inspired by Moksha Patam – now known as Snakes & Ladders. A game originated in India where the board represents life’s journey.

About Indian Matchbox Artworks
Matchbox artworks have a rich and vibrant history in India, capturing changes and stories of Indian society. Indian collectors preserved this unique heritage as a hobby finding thrill and intrigue in hunting for these rare items.

The matchboxes come from the largest collection of matchboxes in India – donated to Museum of Art & Photography and Tasveer Ghar by the late Gautam Hemmady.

Discover more about Gautam’s journey as a collector and dive into the storytelling of a nation on Google Arts & Culture.

Thanks to our partners Museum of Art & Photography and Tasveer Ghar for use of their physical collection and digital archive; and Harshit’s collaborators Imaginative Identity Creators Pvt. Ltd.