Saturday, February 2, 2013

France’s Galerie Lelong presents Nalini Malani’s works

Galerie Lelong from France has put up a booth curated by renowned Indian artist Nalini Malani that features works by her apart from those by Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Spero plus Jaume Plensa’s new sculpture.

Though primarily a painter, Nalini Malani is a multi-faceted artist also engaged in theatre, video, neon sculptures etc and has created several impressive installation/performance collaborations as well as vibrant video works. Her practice is greatly influenced by her personal experiences of the Partition of India.

For the artist, to be born in the midnight hour both literally and metaphorically has constantly played a dual role in her life – growing up in the utopian Nehruvian era, as well as living through the trauma of the family’s migration from Karachi to her twin city, Mumbai during partition. The duality of these events in her life linked to more recent political happenings since 1992.”

Her point of view is urban and internationalist, and unwavering in its abject condemnation of a cynical nationalism, which looks to exploit the blind beliefs of the masses. In a way, hers is an art of excess that traverses the boundaries of legitimized narrative, and exceeds the conventional, to initiate dialogue. Summing up the core of her art practice, she quips, “The artist is a witness to a memory of loss. One has to renew oneself without nostalgia…” Since the early 1970s, she has been visualizing her feminine stance in an emphatic manner. The artist is also known to put inherited iconographies and certain cherished cultural stereotypes under scrutiny, and she continues to do so.

Her works are with major international museums as well as private collections like British Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts; Lausanne; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; and The Burger Collection (Zumikon).

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