Nalini Malani
born 1946, in Karachi (before the 1947 Partition of India); lives and works in Mumbai, India
Nalini Malani is considered one of the foremost contemporary artists from India. She was trained as a painter at the Sir JJ School of Art in Bombay [Mumbai] (1964–1969) and became known as a force in India in the 1980s for her deliberate feminist perspective and in the early 1990s for her innovative theater and installation projects. She pioneered multimedia art in India; her video works feature recurring themes around the subjects of desire, gender, identity, memory, race, and transnational politics, especially in reference to India’s postcolonial history after independence and the Partition of 1947. She often draws upon stories from Hindu and Greek mythology, nineteenth-century literary nonsense writing, and early twentieth-century experimental theater to create allegories for present-day events.
