'Womantime' at Art Musings

Mumbai-based Art Musings gallery presents a solo show of works, entitled 'Womantime' by Nalini Malani, one of India’s senior experimental multimedia artists.

From the very outset, she has given the alternative voice a platform in her politically engaged art. Keeping in tune with her basic processes and philosophy, the exhibit features paintings as well as a shadow play, comprising 30 turntables and reverse painted cylinders, as well as a single channel video work.

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.

An introductory note to her new solo states: “Building up innumerable layers of fragmentary images into dreamlike and allegorical constellations, Nalini Malani’s work can be interpreted as a series of phantasmagorical tales. They are charged with critiques of violence, repression and contradiction that plague contemporary society, without becoming didactical but opening up thought provoking interpretations for the viewer.”

The artist received her education in the Fine Arts from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. She is a senior multimedia artist whose practice encompasses drawing and painting, as well as projected animation, video and film. She has participated in several landmark international exhibitions including ‘Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis’, Tate Modern, London, and ‘Unpacking Europe’, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 2001.

Her major solos have been held at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Walsh Gallery, Chicago, and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland. The celebrated artist’s recent notworthy exhibitions include ‘Prospect 1, USA Inc.’ New Orleans (2008); ‘Indian Highway’, Serpentine gallery (2008);  51st and 52nd Venice Biennale (2005-7), and ‘Revolutions - Forms that Turn’, Sydney Biennale (2008).