NALINI MALANI

Brought up in India, a melting pot of diverse ethnic groups, languages and religions, Nalini Malani focuses on the trauma caused by endless conflicts between religions and ethnic groups. The history of constant disunion and chaos, which dispersed to racial and religious disputes even after they were liberated from long colonialism, has been the solid basis for her works. Her artistic language, categorised into race, class and gender, is represented as a visual final product mixing the wounds and suffering of India’s history with her own personal stories. Their narratives, wherein past and present, true records and falsehoods, and history and myth are linked like a Mobius strip, are dismantled and restructured in various methods within an organic space where visual media, its creator, and its viewers join together. They are both inscribers and creators of history at the same time.

ARARIO GALLERY Shanghai will launch Malani’s solo debut in China following the retrospectives at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, 2005, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, 2014, Centre Pompidou in France, 2017, and Castello di Rivoli in Italy, October 2018, which is selected as the best exhibition of last week. The exhibition title Can You Hear Me?: Nalini Malani 1969-2018 comes from one of the artist’s stop-motion sketch animation series, made entirely with iPad drawings in 2018, which urgently calls for the public’s attention toward numerous conflicts, clashes, and paradoxes in opposition with the universal value of the mankind. Malani’s new stop motion animations made of iPad drawings have been shared with public through her Instagram and by exhibiting these brand new stop motion animation works with her very first stop motion video created in 1969, Nalini Malani exhibition at Arario Gallery Shanghai will deliver the never stop experimental spirit of this master female artist, Nalini Malani. The exhibition encompasses Malani’s very early photography and video from 1960s, large-scale film installations, stop-motion animations, reverse paintings and other works emblematic of the artist’s rich career over the last fifty years.