Lot Essay
"[....Malani] dovetails the figures of Sita from the Ramayana and Euripedes' Medea -- the one an ideal of submissive self-sacrifice, the other an emblem of destructive fury -- to propose a complex female persona beyond controlling stereotypes. [...] Malani is a political artist of impressive visual range, now at the height of her power."
(H. Cotter, 'Art in Review; Nalini Malani', The New York Times, 17 September 2004)
"Sita-Medea presents the two sets of mythemes in one intertwined structure: most of the quasi-narrative image-corpus is situated within a single circle, the orb of a poisoned earth rendered in viscous blue-greens and in the crimson and pus-yellow of entrails. The central character of Sita/Medea is represented as a double, reclining on the right margin as she waits for the rejection which is her inevitable fate, and again seated in the middle of the work, as an old hermit (Ravana in disguise, or a prematurely aged Jason draped in the Golden Fleece?) approaches. Outside the central orb at the top and bottom of the work are creatures of the forest, wild animals positioned as though they are supporting the earth, and members of Rama's army of monkeys and bears at play/hastening to battle. Painted on the reverse of transparent mylar, Malani's work presents the imagery as though reconstituted from eviscerated, dried up and reconstituted detritus of human and animal bodies."
(C. Sambrani,'Apocalypse recalled', Nalini Malani: Stories Retold, exhibition catalogue, Bose Pacia, New York, 2004, unpaginated).
(H. Cotter, 'Art in Review; Nalini Malani', The New York Times, 17 September 2004)
"Sita-Medea presents the two sets of mythemes in one intertwined structure: most of the quasi-narrative image-corpus is situated within a single circle, the orb of a poisoned earth rendered in viscous blue-greens and in the crimson and pus-yellow of entrails. The central character of Sita/Medea is represented as a double, reclining on the right margin as she waits for the rejection which is her inevitable fate, and again seated in the middle of the work, as an old hermit (Ravana in disguise, or a prematurely aged Jason draped in the Golden Fleece?) approaches. Outside the central orb at the top and bottom of the work are creatures of the forest, wild animals positioned as though they are supporting the earth, and members of Rama's army of monkeys and bears at play/hastening to battle. Painted on the reverse of transparent mylar, Malani's work presents the imagery as though reconstituted from eviscerated, dried up and reconstituted detritus of human and animal bodies."
(C. Sambrani,'Apocalypse recalled', Nalini Malani: Stories Retold, exhibition catalogue, Bose Pacia, New York, 2004, unpaginated).