Home Nalini malini
About
Nalini malini is one of the most acclaimed artists. Her work is majorly reflects her experiences as a refugee of the Partition of India. She places innate iconographies and unforgettable cultural stereotypes under pressure. Her point of view is determinedly urban and unprejudiced, and unforgiving in its denunciation of a pessimistic chauvinism that exploits the dogmas of the common people.
Interestingly, she tries to go far beyond the precincts of legitimized description, surpassing the conservative and instigating conversation in her artwork.
She was born in 1946 in Karachi. She is a senior multimedia artist with afar-reaching exhibition history. Her practice comprises drawing and painting, as well as the addition of those forms into predictable animation, video and film. Devoted to the role of the artist as social activist, Malani frequently tries to portray her work through the stories of those that have been overlooked disremembered or relegated by history.
Education & Work
Nalini malini competed her diploma in Fine Arts, Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, and Bombay in 1969. While pursuing her diploma course, she maintained a studio at the Bhula bhai Memorial Institute, Bombay, wherein other artists, musicians, dancers and theatre persons worked independently and as a community. Later in 1972, she received French Government Scholarship for Fine Arts to study in Paris. In 1989, she successfully completed his Art Fellowship, Government of India.
Key attributes of her work have been the continuous drive towards new media, international collaboration and increasing dimensions of the pictorial surface into the contiguous space as momentary wall representation, installation, shadow play, multi projection works and theatre.
She has participated in numerous of group exhibition, including Gallery Collection', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; 'Loss for Words', Art Musings, Mumbai; Sightings', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai; States of Departure: Progressives to Present Day', Aicon Gallery, London; 'Pause: A Collection', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai; Tradition, Trauma, Transformation: Representations of Women by Chitra Ganesh, Nalini Malani, Nilima Sheikh', David Winton Bell Gallery List Arts Center, Providence RI; 'A Collection', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai; Orientations: Trajectories in Indian Art', Foundation 'De 11 Lijnen', Oudenburg, Belgium; Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai; 'Collection Show 2010', Arario Gallery, Seoul; Modern Folk: The Folk Art Roots of the Modernist Avant-Garde', Aicon Gallery, New York; 'Have I Opposed To You ? New Art from India and Pakistan', Faye Fleming & Partner, Geneva; Masters of Maharashtra', collection from Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi at Piramal Gallery, National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai; 'Indian Art After Independence: Selected Works from the Collections of Virginia & Ravi Akhoury and Shelley & Donald Rubin', Emile Lowe Gallery, Hempstead; MATER', Universidad de Jaén, Spain; 'Shifting Shapes, Unstable Signs', Yale School of Art, Connecticut, USA; Body Chatter: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art', Walsh Gallery, Chicago; Anxious', Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai; Everywhere Is War (and Rumors of War)’, Bodhi Art, Mumbai and Still Moving Image', Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, New Delhi, to name a few.
Nalini malini also was part of joint exhibition in 2009-2010, 'The Himalaya Project', with Wang Jianwei at Aario Beijing, China.
Apart from this, she has even actively participated in various installation/performance collaborations, including 'Global Liquidity & 23 images of the Avon Lady: Artists’ Books with Australian Artist Fiona Hall; A project with Dr.Anuradha Kapur, theatre director. Performance/installation, Based on Bertolt Brecht's short story, The Job or By the Sweat of Thy Brow Thou Shalt Fail to Earn Thy Bread. Sponsors and producers, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, National Centre of Performing Arts (NCPA), Gallery Chemould & Sakshi Gallery, 6 shows in Mumbai, One Show in New Delhi; A project with Alaknanda Samarth, theatre actress and director. Performance/installation based on Heiner Mueller's Mede material, A Max Mueller Bhavan production, Mumbai.
She has even created video films, such as 'Remembering Mad Meg', Video Shadow Play of Two Single Channel Animations, A Series of Lights and 8 Rotating Reverse Painted Lexan Cylinders, Sound, 3 min; Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain', Five Channel Video Play, Sound, 5 min; Unity in Diversity single channel video supported by Sakshi Gallery and Kalaghoda Art Festival, Mumbai; Trangressions a video/shadow play. Sponsored by the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Remembering Toba Tek Singh video installation 20 minutes , 3 wall projections [one split screen projection], 12 monitors, 12 tin trunks, 12 quilts, wall to wall Mylar, mirrors, sound, text; Memory: Record/Erase single channel work, on Beta cam video, 10- 1/2 minutes; Mede material single channel work, on Beta cam video, 58 minutes and City Of Desires single channel work, on high band U-Mastic video, 18-1/2 minutes.
Awards and Accolades
Nalini malini has been honored with Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize, Lucas Art Residencies, Montalvo Ca., USA, Civitella Ranieri, Italy and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Artist in Residence Program. She was conferred with USIA Fellowship for extensive travel in the USA, Junior Fellowship, Govt. of India and Senior Fellowship, Govt. of India.
