Nalini Malani

Malani is the only child of Satni Advani (Sindhi Sikh) and Jairam Malani (Theosophist).[4] Born in Karachi (Sindh) in what was then British India (now Pakistan) in 1946,[5] Malani's family sought refuge in India during the partition of India.[6] They relocated to Kolkata (then Calcutta), where her father worked with Tata Airlines (later Air India) and relocated to Mumbai in 1954, where they lived in a colony built for displaced Sindhis.[4] Her family's experience of leaving behind their home and becoming refugees deeply informs Malani's artworks.[7]

Malani studied Fine Arts in Mumbai[8] and obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in 1969. From 1964-67, she had a studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute, which used to be located at Breach Candy, Mumbai (then Bombay),[4] where artists, musicians, dancers and theater persons worked individually and collectively.[9] It was here that she had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with artists from allied forms of artistic practice like theatre.[7] She received a scholarship from the French Government to study fine arts in Paris from 1970 to 1972. She was also a recipient of the Art Fellowship from the Government of India from 1984 to 1989.

After her graduation, she spent a few years working with photography and film.[10] 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.[11][10] In the initial part of her career, Malani mostly focused on paintings - acrylic on canvas & watercolour on paper. She produced a realistic socially based portrayal of Contemporary India.[12] She continued to explore techniques such as the reverse painting method (taught to her in the late-80s by Bhupen Khakhar), 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.[13] In 1985, she curated the first exhibition of Indian female artists, in Delhi. This led to a series of traveling exhibitions that were taken to public spaces as an attempt to go beyond the elitist atmosphere of the art gallery.[13]

The sectarian violence that hit India in the early 1990s after the demolition of the Babri Masjid triggered a sudden shift in her artwork.[12] The renewed religious conflict that had proven to be recurring (bringing back memories of the Partition) pushed her artistic endeavours past the boundaries of the surface and into space.[14] 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.[8]

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."[14]

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.[15] 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.[15] 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.[16] 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.[8] Her multifaceted oeuvre can be broadly classified under two categories; Her experiments with visual media and the moving image like Utopia (1969-1976), Mother India (2005), In Search of Vanished Blood (2012); Her ephemeral and in-situ works such as City of Desires (1992), Medea as Mutant (1993/2014), The Tables have turned (2008). Although her work talks of violence and conflict, her main intent is collective catharsis.[17]

• 1993 - Medea, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Bombay (now Mumbai), India
• 1996 - Medea, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, India
• 1997 - The Job, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, India
• 1999 - Remembering Toba Tek Singh, Prince of Wales Museum (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya), Mumbai, India
• 2002 - Hamletmachine, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA[23]
• 2005 - Exposing the Source: The Painting of Nalini Malani, Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts, USA[24]
• 2007 - Nalini Malani, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland[25]
• 2009 - Nalini Malani, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand[26]
• 2010 - Splitting the Other, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland[27]
• 2012 - Mother India: Videoplays by Nalini Malani, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia[28]
• 2013 - Listening to the Shades, Centre de la Gravure, La Louvière, Belgium[29]
• 2013 - Listening to the Shades, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai, India[30]
• 2014 - You can't keep Acid in a Paper Bag, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India[31]

Malani's installation In Search of Vanished Blood at the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2014

• 2014 - In Search of Vanished Blood, co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and 14-18 Now, WW1 Centenary Art commissions, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, United Kingdom[32]
• 2014 - Engadiner Museum, St. Moritz, Switzerland[33]
• 2014 - Transgressions, Asia Society Museum, New York, USA[34]
• 2015 - Stories Untold, Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port-Louis, Mauritius[35]
• 2016 - In Search of Vanished Blood, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA[36]
• 2017 - Transgressions, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands[2]
• 2017/18 - The Rebellion of the Dead: Retrospective 1969-2018 Part I, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France[37]
  

  Nalini Malani, The Rebellion of the Dead, 2017
• 2018 - The Rebellion of the Dead: Retrospective 1968-2018 Part II, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy[38]
• 2019 - Can You Hear Me?, Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, India[39]
• 2020 - The Witness, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai, India[40]
• 2020 - You Don't Hear Me, Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain[41]
• 2020 - Can You Hear Me?, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK[42]
• 2020 - Utopia!?, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal[43]
• 2021 - Can You Hear Me?, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain[44]

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