Nalini Malani

Nalini Malani (born in 1946 in Karachi, undivided India) is a pioneering Indian contemporary artist with an artistic practice that spans over six decades. Her work encompasses film, camera-less photography, reverse painting, wall drawing/erasure performance, theatre, animation, and video/shadow play. 

Initially rooted in the disciplines of painting, filmmaking, and photography, Malani’s artistic practice took a radical turn in the late eighties. Confronted by the rising waves of orthodoxy, Malani extended beyond the possibilities of canvas, reaching a wider audience through the potent expression of theatre, ephemeral wall drawings, and the mesmerising allure of video/shadow plays. In these works, she draws deeply from historical events and her personal experience of the Partition of British India, giving voice to the marginalised through her evocative visual stories. Her art investigates the questions of gender, race, social inequality, and cultural identity. 

The protagonists in Malani’s art emerge from across Indian and European mythologies. She draws references from the underbellies of history and culture, crafting epic narratives that simultaneously emerge and dissolve before our eyes. For Malani, it’s crucial to reflect on how humanity is absorbing the impending sense of crisis and catastrophe. She does this by unsettling our ingrained ways of seeing both art and life. Her socially engaged work continues to illuminate and inspire several generations of creators from the Global South. 

Malani’s work has been exhibited in 29 solo Museum exhibitions, including four retrospectives, 22 biennales, and over 200 international museum group presentations. A major breakthrough came in 2012 presenting ‘In Search of Vanished Blood”, at dOCUMENTA(13), when the rotating reverse painted cylinders in a video/shadow play became her international signature. In 2014, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art organised a year-long retrospective, “You Can’t Keep Acid in a Paper Bag,” curated by Roobina Karode. In 2017/18 the Centre Pompidou in collaboration with Castello di Rivoli organised the two-part retrospective “The Rebellion of the Dead”. And in 2021 M+ presented in their opening exhibition Malani’s solo “Vision in Motion”. Looking ahead, 2027 will witness the Tate Modern’s major survey exhibition ‘The Future is Female’ on Malani’s extensive oeuvre, which coincides with the 80th anniversary of the Partition of British India. Malani’s work is now held in the esteemed collection of 50 museums worldwide, including M+ in Hong Kong, KNMA in New Delhi, British Museum and Tate Modern in London, MoMA, MET, Guggenheim in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, and the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide.