A profusion of figures and disparate elements from animate and inanimate spheres

One of the most significant artists of her generation, her artistic output is mostly in cycles (polyptychs), employing multiple-projection video installations. A profusion of figures and disparate elements from animate and inanimate spheres like fragments of machines, tadpoles, worms, larvae, winged creatures, monsters etc are portrayed in elementary colors like yellow, blue and red.

She has depicted the women's revolt in a nation – now the world’s largest democracy - first caught between the legacy of colonialism and the third-world socialism ideal, and later pushed by forces of globalization into dramatic socio-political and economic transformations. Her artistic world, largely constituted by visible overlays, is fluid with everything in a constant state of metamorphosis.

In it, bones, brain, blood vessels and body organs often float outside it - in both volatile and exploded state because of the Splitting. On the concluding day, an Erasure Performance will take place, wherein they will be washed with milk. This material alludes to the milk powder imported from Chernobyl, a site of nuclear fallout, more than two decades ago. Her Mutants also refer to children born with radiation-related deformities after nuclear tests in the US.

In a rather gloomy gallery at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland that is holding a major retrospective of her works, creepy creatures surround spectators. The artist terms them ‘Mutants’. Two of them are drawn on the wall; rest painted on milk carton paper.

Put in a larger perspective, her awkward figures remind us of the violence the planet and its inhabitants are infected with under the garb of progress. In a hemi-cycle carrying five large video projections, Nalini Malani makes us confront with the birth of the India that was also the cleavage of the nation, whereas in ‘Transgressions’, she deploys a new type of installation work she terms a ‘video/shadow play’.

‘Splitting the Other’ section has fourteen panels that present a procession of monsters, human figures and angels, free-floating brains and some grub-like entities. They peer through blank eyes, of canons, anti-tank mines, bones, embryos, and umbilical cords.