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Lot Essay
My concern is with these primary instincts (...from extreme destructiveness, hatred, violence to intense concern and love...) which manifest themselves in external reality and also in the inner chaos of the mind. I work from my personal experience and fantasy, aiming to move from the particular to the general...
- Nalini Malani, 1982
Born in Karachi in 1946, Nalini Malani moved to Calcutta with her family shortly before the partition of the Indian subcontinent the following year. Several decades later, her work continues to be shaped by her family’s experience as refugees at that time, focusing on themes of memory, politics and identity through a meditative and poetic vocabulary. Asserting the postcolonial claim that the indigenous and the ‘other’ are active participants in the process of decolonization, Malani is unapologetic in her appropriation of imagery from a multitude of cultures and time periods. In a career spanning more than fifty years, Malani has worked with several genres and mediums including painting, photography, theatrical productions, video, digital animation and large-scale installations.
Malani’s work, often incorporating deliberately unsettling iconography, challenges the notion that marginalized voices should be offered a space in the narrative of history only when presented in a palatable guise. Her images lie in an interstitial space between familiarity and illusiveness, resisting easy readings. In many of her early works, including the present lot, a large painting from 1990-91 titled Love, Malani explores feminine experiences and struggles through a personal lens to create images of empowerment. “In these paintings, Malani draws on her own experience to explore the simple pleasures, intense attachments, solitary moments, erotic passions, and hidden turmoil of women’s lives. A deep connection to her own emotional life, and to herself as a woman has been the wellspring of Malani’s art from the outset” (S. Bean, ‘Along the way to Alicetime’, Nalini Malani, Living in Alicetime, Mumbai, 2006, pp. 43-44).
However, in these works the female form is not isolated; instead, the artist places it in realms populated with male figures, fragments of landscapes and other abstract elements. In the present lot, for example, the artist focuses in on a radiant female figure, surrounded by a warm light that seems to emanate from her relaxed figure. Outside of this space, several male figures populate the painted surface, including one who Malani prominently places perpendicular to the female protagonist. Depending on the orientation of the painting, the woman either stands over this figure in a position of power, or looks up at him from a consciously submissive state of repose. In both scenarios, however, she willfully controls the attention and desire she attracts.
Linking this painting to a later series of paintings and performances that Malani created, the art historian Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker writes, “In her brilliant production of Heiner Mueller’s Medea, in 1994, she addressed the incestuous and tragic aspects of love. In this painting, which was surely done as a precedent to Medea, she explores the minefield of sexual love. The painting may be viewed vertically of horizontally, a situation that is common to many contemporary works. The ambivalent axes further underscores the tensions building on the canvas, which in turn puts the onus of interpretation upon the viewer. Whichever way it is seen, the woman is central to the desires of the shadowy males that surround her. As both a seductive siren and a source of shakti, the female principle of the universe, her body is enhanced by a golden glow that ignites the emotions of love, passion and betrayal” (M. Milford-Lutzker, Post-Independence Contemporary Indian Art: Selections from the Sunanda and Umesh Gaur Collection, Newark, 2002).
In this cinematic scene, Malani encourages viewers to explore the various possible relationships her figures could represent, and the outcomes of their interaction. The artist also uses these large paintings to challenge the limitations of single frame narratives, foreshadowing her experiments with theatre, cinema, art-books and animation as alternate forms of expression that allowed for continuous, nuanced explorations of her subjects.
- Nalini Malani, 1982
Born in Karachi in 1946, Nalini Malani moved to Calcutta with her family shortly before the partition of the Indian subcontinent the following year. Several decades later, her work continues to be shaped by her family’s experience as refugees at that time, focusing on themes of memory, politics and identity through a meditative and poetic vocabulary. Asserting the postcolonial claim that the indigenous and the ‘other’ are active participants in the process of decolonization, Malani is unapologetic in her appropriation of imagery from a multitude of cultures and time periods. In a career spanning more than fifty years, Malani has worked with several genres and mediums including painting, photography, theatrical productions, video, digital animation and large-scale installations.
Malani’s work, often incorporating deliberately unsettling iconography, challenges the notion that marginalized voices should be offered a space in the narrative of history only when presented in a palatable guise. Her images lie in an interstitial space between familiarity and illusiveness, resisting easy readings. In many of her early works, including the present lot, a large painting from 1990-91 titled Love, Malani explores feminine experiences and struggles through a personal lens to create images of empowerment. “In these paintings, Malani draws on her own experience to explore the simple pleasures, intense attachments, solitary moments, erotic passions, and hidden turmoil of women’s lives. A deep connection to her own emotional life, and to herself as a woman has been the wellspring of Malani’s art from the outset” (S. Bean, ‘Along the way to Alicetime’, Nalini Malani, Living in Alicetime, Mumbai, 2006, pp. 43-44).
However, in these works the female form is not isolated; instead, the artist places it in realms populated with male figures, fragments of landscapes and other abstract elements. In the present lot, for example, the artist focuses in on a radiant female figure, surrounded by a warm light that seems to emanate from her relaxed figure. Outside of this space, several male figures populate the painted surface, including one who Malani prominently places perpendicular to the female protagonist. Depending on the orientation of the painting, the woman either stands over this figure in a position of power, or looks up at him from a consciously submissive state of repose. In both scenarios, however, she willfully controls the attention and desire she attracts.
Linking this painting to a later series of paintings and performances that Malani created, the art historian Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker writes, “In her brilliant production of Heiner Mueller’s Medea, in 1994, she addressed the incestuous and tragic aspects of love. In this painting, which was surely done as a precedent to Medea, she explores the minefield of sexual love. The painting may be viewed vertically of horizontally, a situation that is common to many contemporary works. The ambivalent axes further underscores the tensions building on the canvas, which in turn puts the onus of interpretation upon the viewer. Whichever way it is seen, the woman is central to the desires of the shadowy males that surround her. As both a seductive siren and a source of shakti, the female principle of the universe, her body is enhanced by a golden glow that ignites the emotions of love, passion and betrayal” (M. Milford-Lutzker, Post-Independence Contemporary Indian Art: Selections from the Sunanda and Umesh Gaur Collection, Newark, 2002).
In this cinematic scene, Malani encourages viewers to explore the various possible relationships her figures could represent, and the outcomes of their interaction. The artist also uses these large paintings to challenge the limitations of single frame narratives, foreshadowing her experiments with theatre, cinema, art-books and animation as alternate forms of expression that allowed for continuous, nuanced explorations of her subjects.