Nalini Malani

Throughout her remarkable career, Nalini Malani, an acclaimed artist from India, has forged a unique visual language that challenges entrenched notions of cultural dominance, national identity, and body image. 

Biography of the Nalini Malani 

Nalini Malani was born in 1946 in Karachi, British India, now known as Pakistan. Due to the Indian partition, her family moved to Kolkata before settling in Mumbai in 1958.

Malani's artistic journey began at the Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Mumbai, where she studied from 1964 to 1969 and earned a Diploma in Fine Arts. During that time, she had a studio at the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute, a multidisciplinary arts center in Bombay. This unique environment fostered collaboration between artists, theater actors, and musicians, providing Malani with diverse cultural influences that helped shape her artistic practice.

After completing her studies, Malani delved into photography and film, becoming deeply involved in these mediums. She became the youngest participant in the Vision Exchange Workshop, a program dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary experimentation. During the workshop, she explored techniques such as photograms and various film formats.

In 1970, Malani was granted a scholarship from the French government, which led her to study in Paris from 1970 to 1972. This period coincided with the aftermath of the May 1968 student protests and worker strikes in Paris, an era that deeply influenced her political convictions. During her time in the city, she actively worked with illegal migrants, distributed leftist publications, and attended lectures by notable political thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and Simone de Beauvoir. After completing her studies, Malani returned to India, driven by her desire to contribute to the ongoing process of nation-building.

In recognition of her artistic achievements, Malani was honored with the prestigious Joan Miró Prize in 2019, a distinction bestowed by the Fundació Joan Miró and the Obra Social "la Caixa." Her notable accolades also include a grant from the French government for studying in Paris in 1970, 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.

Malani's work is housed in the collections of renowned museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Asia Society Museum in New York, The Burger Collection in Hong Kong, Hauser and Wirth in London, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai and New Delhi, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, the British Museum in London, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, among many others.

Currently, Nalini Malani resides and works between Mumbai and Amsterdam.

Nalini Malani's art style

Nalini Malani's artistic expression is deeply shaped by her personal experiences as a refugee of the Partition of India. Drawing from this profound background, she fearlessly places under pressure inherited iconographies and cherished cultural stereotypes. Her perspective remains resolutely urban and internationalist, criticizing the manipulative exploitation of mass beliefs by cynical nationalist agendas. Malani's art embraces the ethos of excess, purposefully transcending the confines of legitimized narratives and venturing into unconventional territories, serving as a catalyst for the dialogue.

A characteristic of Malani's work is its gradual embrace of new media, reflecting her openness to innovation. She expanded the dimensions of her pictorial surface into the surrounding space through ephemeral wall drawings, installations, shadow plays, multi-projection works, and theatre.