Case Study 2
Nalini Malani is a contemporary Indian artist who incorporates ancient traditional artistic practices and mythologies with current issues involving women and society. Malani was born in Karachi in 1946. Shortly before it became part Pakistan she and her family relocated to Calcutta, in post-Partition India. Her family’s experience of leaving behind their home and becoming refugees during that time informs much of her art. Malani studied Fine Arts in Mumbai and continued on to become one of India’s foremost contemporary artists. She was also one of the first to transition from traditional painting to installation and multimedia work, and organized the first Indian female artists’ show in 1985. Malani traveled worldwide, going to Egypt when she was 12 and spending a few years in Paris. This international background can be seen in her multi-cultural representations of female archetypes. She combines myths from antiquity and Indian tradition in combination with current issues regarding gender, feminism, and politics. Malani is concerned with women’s issues and the socially oppressed while drawing from myths ranging from Hindu figures such as Sita to western figures like Medea and Cassandra, and even Alice in Wonderland. (Thomas)
“Myths have been brought to us through the wisdom of civilization, not by one single author. It’s almost as if the flotsam that comes in through the waves picks up things that are like jewels. Then they continue to come in every now and again and then you notice them and say, ‘well, this has some degree of truth even till today… As any artist would say, they have the prerogative to move the myth into contemporary times, because it was they who first painted the faces of Sita, Radha, Krishna and Rama. So I continue with that idea even until today, when I bring the myth into contemporary times and I make it into a contemporary issue by using the myth as a metaphor.” (Malani quoted in Naji)
Malani’s show “Cassandra’s Gift” at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, was based on Christa Wolf’s re-interpretation of the Cassandra myth. Malani wrote a text where she assumes the role of Cassandra, a classic figure from Greek Mythology featured in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Cassandra is given the gift of premonition but cursed by Apollo so no one believes her. Malani explains that “profound insights that individuals have that can be good for the future of humankind are not paid heed to and we continue in the direction of death and destruction.”2 (Nalini Malani, “Cassandra,” in Robert Storr, Nalini Malani, Listening to the Shades, New York, Charta and Arario, 2008, n.p.) (in Thomas)
“To make it into a contemporary issue, what I felt very strongly was that both the Cassandra and Apollo elements exist in us and we do have the gift of prophecy. We all have premonitions and common sense. We know it’s wrong to start nuclear projects since they’re doomed to disaster, and yet we continue. We have the gift of common sense and intuitive knowledge that alerts us, but then Apollo appears to thwart this knowledge. Also, it is important to compare similarities between Medea and Sita – both suffered as their husbands betrayed them.” (Malani qtd in Naji)
The influence of Greek and Hindu mythology is present throughout Malani’s work. In 1993, she created a theater installation of the Greek tragedy of Medea. Medea is the story of a woman betrayed by her husband whom she had sacrificed everything for. In her grief and despair, she kills her own children. The theme of destroyed women is also a constant in her art. The painting “Twice Upon a Time” refers to the Hindu goddess Sita who went through a trial by fire to prove that she had been faithful to her husband Rama while being captured by a demon. According to the myth she passed the test, but while pregnant with twins she was still forced into exile by Rama because she had lived with another man. The 11-paneled work is done in her reverse-painting style with bright colors of Neon orange and turquoise with contrasting dark browns and black lines. The characters are depicted in contemporary attire to link it with todays world. “Sita has been an obsession -- the violation of a woman, and the idea that she’s then blamed for it” portrays the plight of many women in contemporary India, Malani said. (Seervai)
Malani uses a variety of mediums, incorporating older techniques with modern technology. Malani describes her use of varies techniques in relation to time saying “The medium may change, but the same thought process or idea runs through several types of my artworks. The exigency of the situation often directs me to a certain medium.” In her work with Cassandra she says began by doing drawings in an artist’s book which developed into larger pages for the book that became Listening to the Shades (a collaboration with Robert Storr). They later evolved into paintings and watercolours, then shadow plays, and eventually became the basis for Documenta 13, In Search of Vanished Blood. “So it’s the exigency of how the thought has developed. This is actually what brings forth the material. The idea, the concept and the medium dovetail into each other.” (Malani qtd in Naji)
In “Listening to the Shades,” at Arario Gallery in New York Malani uses acrylic and enamel on the reverse of a transparent surface like mylar. Malani uses light projections through or from revolving acrylic cylinders which are painted with mythological imagery. As the cylinders turn, the images along with the lights move across the walls, intersecting through each other in what Malani calls a shadow play. When the images combine and separate they mimic the idea of maya. The method comes from a tradition of reverse painting that goes back to Santiniketan in the early- to mid-20th century. It is also related to the Hindu idea of maya, an image taking form in a void. The floating images may represent the “shades” in the exhibition title. According to Malani, the title also describes artistic process, the “making” or “finding” the work. “Listening to the shades may be her term for paying attention to her inner voices as they drift upward from the darkness of her unconscious, and of the collective unconscious. Drawing them up and promoting their clarity is the work of the artist.” (Thomas)
Malani uses the same 18th-century Chinese technique of reverse painting with video and shadow reflections in Transgressions III. When interviewed at the exhibit Malani explains “It is my desire to make the invisible visible”. Three rooms are filled with videos, paintings, wall-drawings and what the artist refers to as a video-shadow play. Moving images of animals and deities are painted on the inner side of four revolving cylinders. The technique involves layering paint from reverse– starting with the finishing touches on the transparent Mylar and flipping it over to view the final product. When light is projected, the shadows from the paintings then reflect on the walls along with video projections and a seven-minute sound recording of a child’s voice saying “Mama, I want to speak English,”. The video depicts the scripts of Indian languages falling into the ground, reflecting the crisis of identity which occurred after the growth of business outsourcing in India in the late 1990s and 2000s. This creates a constantly shifting environment for the viewer. (Seervai)
Malani describes her process of reverse glass painting as beginning in 1988. She worked with two other artists on a mural, and one of the artists Bhupen Khakhar, introduced the idea after returning from a workshop in Hungary where he had learnt the technique. It is similar to a technique that was brought to South India by the Chinese traders in the 18th century, which was used to sell postcard size erotic images. The Tanjore painters still use the method today. According to Malani: “They changed the erotic nature of the imagery into the sacred, which for me was a very interesting change. I wanted to bring back the profanity into the medium. So it was a bit of serendipity when Bhupen told me that he could teach me this technique, I was only more than willing to have him as my tutor. I liked the medium because I realised I was dyslexic, so working in the reverse works very well. I also, as I said, like to change this idea of the sacred into the profane. In fact, my very first shadow play was called The Sacred and the Profane.”. (Malani qtd in Naji)
In an interview with Cassandra Naji, Malani was asked: “All the female characters you use – Medea, Cassandra, Sita – are characters who are representative of the “suppression of the inner instinctive voice”. Do you hope that the personal stories of these characters could pervade the Indian audience and make an impact?”
“I’m only an artist, what can I say? This is a quest, my way of researching and trying to find a language. The idea of art is how to extend a person’s thought into other directions, start up a creative process. So as I always say, an artwork locked up in a room is dead. It is only you and I, with the art in front of us, who can awaken the art. While awakening the art, we also awaken something in ourselves.” (Malani qtd in Naji)
Naji, Cassandra. "Indian artist Nalini Malani talks myth, metaphor and women – interview | Art Radar". http://artradarjournal.com/2014/03/21/artist-nalini-malani-talks-myth-metaphor-and-women-interview/
Nalini Malani, “Cassandra,” in Robert Storr, Nalini Malani, Listening to the Shades, New York, Charta and Arario, 2008, n.p.
Seervai, Shanoor. "A Retrospective of the Works of Nalini Malani Who Paints in Reverse". Wall Street Journal. https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/10/10/a-retrospective-of-the-works-of-nalini-malani-who-paints-in-reverse/
Thomas. Nalini Malani: Postmodern Cassandra ArtSeen https://brooklynrail.org/2009/06/artseen/nalini-malani-postmodern-cassandra