Nalini MALANI

Widely considered the pioneer of video art in India, Nalini MALANI (b. 1946) has a fifty-year multi-media practice that includes film, photography, painting, wall drawing/erasure performance, theatre, animation and video/shadow play. Embodying the role of the artist as a social activist, MALANI gives a female voice to the marginalised through her visual stories. She draws inspiration from history, culture and her direct experience of the Partition of India to look at themes of violence, feminism, politics, racial tension and social inequality, exploring in particular the repressive powers of the state. Starting out as a filmmaker and photographer after graduating from the Sir J. J. School of Art, MALANI broke out of the classical painting frame in the late 1980s to reach a wider audience, as a protest against the rise of orthodoxy in politics. A leading experimental artist in India, MALANI’s committed art practice reveals a search for the profound certainties in life, society and experience-persisting ‘evidence’. In her art she places inherited iconographies and cherished cultural stereotypes under pressure. Her point of view is unwaveringly urban and internationalist, and unsparing in its condemnation of a cynical nationalism that exploits the beliefs of the masses. As an ‘artist’s artist’ she has inspired the next generation of young artists in the sub-continent.

 

Nalini MALANI completed a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Sir J. J. School of Art, India in 1969 and received a French Government Scholarship for Fine Arts to study in Paris from 1970 to 1972. In 2010 she was conferred an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute. MALANI’s work has been celebrated in thirty-eight museum/institutional solo exhibitions twenty-four biennales around the world. Nalini MALANI has had retrospectives at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Rivoli, Italy, 2018), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France, 2017), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi, India, 2014), Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland, 2010) and Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, USA, 2004). MALANI has presented solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide including ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, Canada, 2023), National Gallery (London, UK, 2023), Holburne Museum (Bath, UK, 2022), M+ (Hong Kong, 2022), Kunstmuseum Den Haag (The Hague, The Netherlands, 2021), Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK, 2021), Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona, Spain, 2020) Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum (Mumbai, India, 2020), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2017), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, USA, 2016); Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia, 2012); and New Museum (New York, USA, 2002). MALANI received the Fukuoka Prize for Arts and Culture (2013), St. Moritz Art Masters Lifetime Achievement Award (2014), Asian Art Game Changers Award Hong Kong (2016), Joan Miró Prize, Barcelona (2019), First Contemporary Fellowship from the National Gallery, London (2020) and the Kyoto Prize Art and Philosophy, Kyoto (2023). MALANI's works have been acquired by over forty international institutions including The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), The Metropolitan Museum (New York, USA), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Tate, Modern (London, UK), Musée national d’art moderne - Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), M+ (Hong Kong), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi, India), Art Gallery of Western Austalia (Perth, Australia), Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) and Art Gallery of South Australia, (Adelaide, Australia) and The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea).