Nalini Malani Indian, b. 1946
Biography
Born in Karachi (undivided India) in 1946, Nalini Malani received a classical academic training in painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai. For five decades, Malani has in her art addressed cultural, social and political issues in the Indian Subcontinent, including the conflict between India and Pakistan, the oppression of and violence against women, the struggle for authentic democracy and other perversions of progress. Starting out as a painter, film-maker and photographer in 1969, Malani broke out of the classical painting frame in the late eighties to reach a wider audience, with installations, theatre, ephemeral wall drawings, erasure performances and video/shadow plays.
With a celebrated and growing international presence, Malani has participated in innumerable solo and group exhibitions around the world, more recently including the National Gallery, London (2023); M+, Hong Kong (2021–22); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020–21); Max Mueller Bhavan Institute, Mumbai (2019); Arario Gallery, Shanghai (2018); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Mauritius (2015); Engadinar Museum, St Moritz (2014); Aicon Gallery, London (2011); and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011), to name just a few. The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, presented Malani’s first retrospective in Italy and in France in 2017–18, and her first retrospective in India was held by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, in 2014. She has also participated extensively in biennales, including the Venice Biennale, dOCUMENTA, Bienal de São Paulo, the Istanbul Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Shanghai Biennale, Prospect New Orleans, Kochi–Muziris Biennale and Taipei Biennial, among others.
Her work is included in the collections of several important international institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Asia Society Museum, New York; The Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Hauser and Wirth, London; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and New Delhi; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; British Museum, London; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Kawaguchi Museum, Saitama; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Wilfredo Lam Center, Havana; and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, USA.
She was awarded the prestigious Joan Miró prize in 2019, granted by the Fundació Joan Miró and the Obra Social “la Caixa”. Malani received a grant from the French government to study in Paris as early as 1970, and more recently an honorary doctorate in fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2019; the Asian Art Game Changers Award in 2016; the St Moritz Art Masters Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014; and the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize in 2013.
The artist lives and works between Bombay and Amsterdam.
Works
Exhibitions
Art Fairs
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Art Basel Hong Kong 2023
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Wan Chai, Hong Kong 21 - 25 March 2023At the long-awaited return of Art Basel’s Hong Kong edition, we are presenting artworks by leading Indian contemporary artists Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Balkrishna Doshi,...Read more -
INDIA ART FAIR 2023
NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Okhla, New Delhi 9 - 12 February 2023With a diverse roster of artists across conditioning, intention, practice and cultural attitudes – including A. Ramachandran, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Balkrishna Doshi, Biraaj Dodiya,...Read more -
FRIEZE SEOUL
2 - 5 September 2022Our curation explores what it means to share a history, by tracing patterns of consequence in interdependent systems and resting the debate on inter-sectionality. Women’s...Read more -
India Art Fair 2020
30 January - 2 February 2020
Bulletin
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Nalini Malani: My Reality is Different | National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship with Art Fund
The National Gallery 1 March 2023Artist Nalini Malani, our first National Gallery contemporary fellow, presents new ways of seeing well-known works of art. Taking her inspiration from paintings in the...Read more -
M+ presents Nalini Malani: Vision in Motion
TimeOut 23 December 2021Internationally renowned for her reverse paintings and immersive multimedia installations, Nalini Malani is widely recognised as a pioneer of video art and experimental film. In...Read more -
M+ showcases new exhibition - Nalini Malani: Vision in Motion
The Standard 7 December 2021M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District announced the opening of Nalini Malani: Vision in Motion, an...Read more -
Works by Nalini Malani at Tate
Tate 7 December 2021 -
Walking through Nalini Malani’s works on Instagram
By Zahra Amiruddin | The Hindu 27 March 2020Behind doors that can now be witnessed virtually; the resounding voices on the streets, from the (now disbanded, owing to the COVID-19 outbreak) sit-in protest...Read more -
Art alert: Check out an exhibition of work by Nalini Malani at the Bhau Daji Lad
By Natasha Rego | The HIndustan Times 10 January 2020Art, heritage, violence and beauty come together in an exhibition of 10 works by experimental artist Nalini Malani at the city’s Bhau Daji Lad museum,...Read more -
‘The rise in the price of art doesn’t reflect its quality’
By Anushree Majumdar | The Indian Express 6 November 2019Stepping inside the gallery at Mumbai’s Max Mueller Bhavan to see Nalini Malani’s first solo in recent years, ‘Can You Hear Me?’, we are immediately...Read more -
A voice against violence
By Giridhar Khasnis | Deccan Herald 11 August 2019In 2013, Nalini Malani became the first Asian woman to receive the prestigious Arts & Culture Fukuoka Prize for her “consistent focus on such daring...Read more -
‘Uprootedness is not always negative’: Nalini Malani
By Ritika Kochar | The Hindu 28 June 2019One of our most thought-provoking contemporary artists, Nalini Malani, known for her lush, politically charged mixed-media paintings and drawings, videos, installations and theatre, was recently...Read more -
I Draw, Therefore I Am
By Chinki Sinha | india Today 21 June 2019Mumbai-based Nalini Malani has been making art for 50 years. Concerned with the dispossessed and the voiceless, her work has everything, from Manto to mythology....Read more -
Prophetess of high art
By Chinki Sinha | India Today 13 June 2019Here used to be a prophetess once. The burden of Greek mythological character Cassandra's 'gift' is her ability to see the future. She appears on...Read more -
Meet Nalini Malani, the first Indian contemporary artist to win Rs 54 lakh Joan Miro Prize
By Harun Nair | GQ India 3 June 2019Indians are breaking records in so many different fields every single day and as it turns out, we are not to be left behind in...Read more -
Mumbai-based artist Nalini Malani awarded coveted 2019 Joan Miró Prize
FirstPost 24 May 2019Indian artist Nalini Malani has been chosen the winner of the seventh edition of one of the highly coveted art awards in the world —...Read more -
Nalini Malani: A Memoirist for the Subaltern
By Radhika Iyengar | Mint 17 September 2018A few weeks before artist Nalini Malani’s retrospective exhibition, The Rebellion Of The Dead: 1969-2018—Part II, opens at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art...Read more -
Nalini Malani: A Female Voice in Art
By Rasalyn D'Mello | Mint 20 November 2017Altogether, it was a very rich atmosphere.' This is how Nalini Malani described her experience at the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), the multidisciplinary initiative run...Read more -
Orbit of fantasy: Nalini Malani’s transgressive play at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
By Uma Nair | Architectural Digest India 18 May 2017An artist who uses fictional tools and chimerical visuals to emphasise the real and the political. An Indian woman artist who has had the largest...Read more -
Nalini Malani
BY DEBRA LENNARD | Frieze 6 September 2016‘Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood’ is one half of Eva Respini’s punchy first season of in-house exhibitions as chief curator at the Institute...Read more -
A Retrospective of the Works of Nalini Malani Who Paints in Reverse
By Shanoor Seervai | The Wall Street Journal 9 October 2014When artist Nalini Malani first started walking to her studio in Lohar Chawl, a wholesale market for electronic goods in Mumbai, she averted her gaze...Read more -
Retrospective | Nalini Malani: You Can't Keep Acid in a paper bag at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art 26 September 2014“You Can’t Keep Acid in a Paper Bag” is artist Nalini Malani’s first ever retrospective showcasing in India. Conceptualised in three-parts, each chapter ran for...Read more -
Nalini Malani | The Perils of Prophecy
By Shougat Dasgupta | Mint 23 January 2014Spread over three rooms on three floors in Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, Nalini Malani ’s small but provocative solo show is a meditation on themes...Read more