Nalini Malani

Nalini Malani, one of India’s most prominent artists, comprises paintings, wall drawings, video installations and a shadow play. Known for her politically charged work, Malani has gained an international reputation for her multi-layered mixed-media installations. Sourced from history and culture, and mixed with Malani’s personal influences and experiences, they build up a narrative of epic proportions. Images from Palestine and Bosnia, and from the American destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are projected over Indian references, mixing universal concepts with specific historical and personal ones.  

She was brought up in India, the melting pot of diverse ethnic groups, languages and religions, focuses on the trauma caused by endless conflicts between religions and ethnic groups. The history of constant disunion and chaos, which dispersed to racial and religious disputes even after they were liberated from long colonialism, have been the solid basis of her works. Her artistic language that is categorized into race, class and gender is represented as a visual final product with the wounds of sufferings from Indian history mixed with the stories which she had kept to herself. Their narratives, where the past and present, true records and falsehoods, and history and myth are linked like a Mobius strip, are dismantled and restructured in various methods within the organic space, where the visual media and their creators and viewers join together. They are both inscribers and creators of history at the same time.