Nalini Malani


Nalini Malani is a contemporary Indian artist. In her early career, she primarily worked in the realms of painting and drawing. Since the 1990s her work expanded to other forms of media like video, film and projected animation. Her works are characterised by the expansion of the pictorial surface into surrounding space culminating in a layered visual narrative that takes the form of ephemeral wall drawings, shadow play, installations, multi projection works and theatre. She adheres to the vision of the artist as a social activist. Her artworks are often politically motivated and focus on themes of displacement, conflict, transnational politics, critical examination of gender roles and the ramifications of globalisation and consumerism. Throughout the course of her artistic career, she has strived to give voice to the stories of those marginalised by history with a focus on human and universal aspects of conflict and the relationship between the exploiter and the exploited. Literature has been a recurrent source of inspiration and reference for Malani. Her work has been featured in several international museums including Stedelijk Museum and the MoMA Museum of Modern Art. She lives and works in Mumbai.

Early life and education

Born in Karachi, British India in 1946, Malani's family sought refuge in India during the Partition of India. They moved to Kolkata, shortly before partition and relocated to Mumbai in 1958. Her family's experience of leaving behind their home and becoming refugees deeply informs Malani's artworks.
Malani studied Fine Arts in Mumbai and obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in 1969. During this period, she had a studio in the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute, Bombay, where artists, musicians, dancers and theater persons worked individually and collectively. It was here that she had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with artists from allied forms of artistic practice like theatre. She received a scholarship from the French Government to study fine arts in Paris from 1970-72. She was also a recipient of the Art Fellowship from the Government of India from 1984-89.

Career

After her graduation, she spent a few years working with photography and film. The themes she explored during this period dealt with the turbulent time that India was experiencing politically and socially, as well the deepening literacy of moving image by its population. In the initial part of her career, Malani mostly focussed on paintings - acrylic on canvas & watercolour on paper. She produced a realistic socially based portrayal of Contemporary India. She continued to explore techniques such as the reverse painting method, which she would recurrently use in her future work. She was disappointed with the lack of acknowledgement that women artists had to face in India and resolved to bring them together for a group show to promote the sense of solidarity. In 1985, she curated the first exhibition of Indian female artists, in Delhi. This led to a series of travelling exhibitions that were taken to public spaces as an attempt to go beyond the elitist atmosphere of the art gallery.
The sectarian violence that hit India in the early 1990s after the demolition of Babri Masjid triggered a sudden shift in her artwork. The renewed religious conflict that had proven to be recurring pushed her artistic endeavours past the boundaries of the surface and into space. Her earlier foray into performance art and her keen interest in Literature brought new dimensions to her art. She is often counted amongst the earliest to transition from traditional painting to new media work. Multimedia served as the perfect platform for staging her multilayered narratives on conflicts, gender issues and feminism. Her career, which has spanned more than five decades shows a gradual movement towards new media and international collaboration.
In 2013, she became the first Asian woman to receive the Arts & Culture Fukuoka Prize for her "consistent focus on such daring contemporary and universal themes as religious conflict, war, oppression of women and environmental destruction." Malani is represented by Galerie Lelong, Paris and New York. Besides this, she has also served various artist residencies in India, Singapore, the US, Japan and Italy.

Works

As an artist Malani has always sought to provoke dialogue by going beyond legitimised boundaries and exceeding the conventional narratives. For two-dimensional works, she uses both oil paintings and watercolors. Her other inspirations are her visions from the realm of memory, myth and desire. The rapid brush style evokes dreams and fantasies. Malani's video and installation work allowed her to shift from strictly real space to a combination of real space and virtual space, moving away from strictly object-based work. Her video work often references divisions, gender, and cyborgs. Malani roots her identity as female and as Indian, and her work might be understood as a way for her identity to confront the rest of the world. She often references Greek and Hindu mythology in her work. The characters of 'destroyed women' like Medea, Cassandra and Sita feature often in her narrative. Her multifaceted oeuvre can be broadly classified under two categories; Her experiments with visual media and the moving image like Utopia, Mother India, In Search of Vanished Blood ; Her ephemeral and in-situ works such as City of Desires, Medea as Mutant, The Tables have turned. Although her work talks of violence and conflict, her main intent is collective catharsis.

Selected art works

''City of Desires'' (1992)

For her 1992 path-breaking installation "City of Desires," at the Chemould Gallery in Mumbai, she drew directly on the walls. The resulting work was ephemeral and site-specific, speaking against Hindu Fundamentalism that was on the rise.

''Remembering Toba Tek Singh'' (1998)

Malani's video installation Remembering Toba Tek Singh is a multi-layered and complex video installation with visual, audio, and interactive components, re-examining the history of India and Pakistan during the Partition of India. The work is based on the short story Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto. includes archival footage of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, equating the Partition of India with destructive violence.

''Hamletmachine'' (2000)

In this video installation, the artist analogically compares India to Hamlet, "never quite knowing which way to go, how to decide, and therefore making wrong decisions." The videos plays consists of four projections - three on walls and the fourth on a bed of salts on the floor. The last projection is a reference to Gandhi's salt march of 1930. The crux of the series of projections was a critique on Hindu Nationalism.

''Unity in Diversity'' (2003)

Malani's 2003 video play, Unity in Diversity, is based on the renowned 19th century Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma's Galaxy of Musicians, with the overt theme of nationalistic unity displayed through the garb of eleven musicians from different parts of India seemingly playing in harmony. Malani makes a statement on this idealised version of unity by incorporating later histories of violence into that image.

''Mother India'' (2005)

The video installation was inspired by an essay by the sociologist Veena Das titled "Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain". It is a synchronised five screen wall-to-wall projection combines archival footage with poetic and painterly image to tell the story of how Indian Nationalism was built using the bodies of women as metaphors for the nation. The work speaks of women as "mutant, de-gendered and violated beyond imagination." The Partition of India and the Gujarat Riots of 2002 are the central events that are referenced in this installation, as there was a sharp increase in the violation of women in these periods.

''In Search of Vanished Blood'' (2012)

This installation which was first produced for the 13th edition of Documenta consists of five larger rotating Mylar cylinders reverse painted with images of soldiers, animals, gods and guns. The shadow play caused by this rotation tells the story of senseless bloodshed especially narrating the story of India since the partition and highlighting the plight of the dispossessed/tribal communities whose lives are drastically affected by developmental decisions made by the government.

Selected Solo exhibitions

Selected Biennials

Awards