Nalini Malani completed a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1969 and received a French Government Scholarship for Fine Arts to study in Paris from 1970 to 1972.
In 2010 she was conferred an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute. Prizes include: Fukuoka Prize for Arts and Culture, 2013; St. Moritz Art Masters Lifetime Achievement Award, 2014; Asian Art Game Changers Award Hong Kong, 2016; Joan Miró Prize, Barcelona, 2019 and in 2020 she received the first Contemporary Fellowship from the National Gallery, London.
Widely considered the pioneer of video art in India, Nalini Malani has a fifty-year multi - media practice that includes film, photography, painting, Wall Drawing/Erasure Performance, theatre, animation and Video/Shadow Play. Embodying the role of the artist as a social activist, Malani gives voice to the marginalised through her visual stories. She draws inspiration from history, culture and her direct experience of the Partition of India to look at themes of violence, feminism, politics, racial tension and social inequality, exploring in particular the repressive powers of the state.
Starting out as a filmmaker and photographer after graduating from the Sir J. J. School of Art, Malani broke out of the classical painting frame in the late 1980s to reach a wider audience, as a protest against the rise of orthodoxy in politics. A leading experimental artist in India, Malani’s committed art practice reveals a search for the profound certainties in life, society and experience-persisting ‘evidence’. In her art she places inherited iconographies and cherished cultural stereotypes under pressure. Her point of view is unwaveringly urban and inter na - tionalist, and unsparing in its condemnation of a cynical nationalism that exploits the beliefs of the masses. As an ‘artist’s artist’ she has inspired the next generation of young artists in the sub continent.
Malani’s work has been celebrated in museum surveys and biennales around the world, and has been acquired by more than thirty international institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; Musée national d’art moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
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William Kentridge and Nalini Malani in Conversation: In Praise of Shadow
October 10, 2020 -
Nalini Malani review – animation chamber is a sensory assault
September 28, 2020 -
Nalini Malani – interview: ‘The future is female. There is no other way’
July 27, 2020 -
Artist Nalini Malani receives the first National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship with Art Fund
June 20, 2020 -
Walking through Nalini Malani's work on instagram
March 27, 2020 -
MMCA looks upon 20 year history in 'the square'
November 14, 2019 -
A VOICE AGAINST VIOLENCE
November 8, 2019 -
THE RISE IN THE PRICE OF ART DOESN’T REFLECT ITS QUALITY
November 6, 2019 -
'UPROOTEDNESS IS NOT ALWAYS NEGATIVE’: NALINI MALANI
June 28, 2019 -
I DRAW, THEREFORE I AM
June 21, 2019 -
PROPHETESS OF HIGH ART
June 13, 2019 -
CONTEMPORARY ARTIST NALINI MALANI BECOMES FIRST INDIAN TO WIN $78K JOAN MIRO PRIZE
May 25, 2019 -
JOAN MIRÓ PRIZE
May 22, 2019 -
INSIDE 'ALCHEMY'
February 11, 2019 -
AHMEDABAD: EXPLORE SHADES OF INDIGO AT THE KASTURBHAI LALBHAI MUSEUM
February 7, 2019 -
NALINI MALANI AT CASTELLO DI RIVOLI MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, TURIN, ITALY
October 24, 2018 -
NALINI MALANI: THE REBELLION OF THE DEAD. RETROSPECTIVE 1969-2018. PART II
September 18, 2018 -
NALINI MALANI: A MEMOIRIST FOR THE SUBALTERN
September 17, 2018 -
ONE OF INDIA’S LEADING ARTISTS IS OFFERING FREE ART ON INSTAGRAM FOR ANYONE TO DOWNLOAD AND OWN
July 5, 2018 -
ORBIT OF FANTASY: NALINI MALANI’S TRANSGRESSIVE PLAY AT THE STEDELIJK MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
May 17, 2017