Nalini Malani: Vision in Motion

EVENT DESCRIPTION

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District (West Kowloon), announced the opening of Nalini Malani: Vision in Motion, an inaugural presentation in The Studio, one of the museum’s signature venues located at the B2 level, as part of the museum’s grand opening display.

Widely recognised as a pioneer of video art and experimental film, Nalini Malani is one of the most prolific cross-disciplinary artists working today. She is internationally renowned for her reverse paintings and immersive multimedia installations which often combine personal narrative with motifs from folklore, classical literature, and mythology to reflect on the collective trauma of the disenfranchised. Her fantastical and multilayered creations, which are informed by her early experiences as a refugee following the partition of India in 1947, express a resolute commitment to investigating the effects of war, violence, and the repression of women.

Malani’s animations and installations, as well as her paintings and performances, feature imagery that feels both personal and universal. Vision in Motion brings together three major artworks—Utopia (1969–1976), Remembering Mad Meg (2007–2019), and Can You Hear Me (2018–2020)—showcasing the evolution of her practice over the past fifty years as she embraced new technologies and ways of working.

The exhibition highlights the artist’s distinctive methods of storytelling, which have the power to transcend the traumas of national divisions and address collective issues of social injustice.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Born in Karachi, British India (now Pakistan) in 1946, Nalini Malani studied at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Mumbai from 1964 to 1969, during which she had a studio at the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute. In 1969, she was invited to participate in the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW) where she made her first stop-motion animation and a series of black and white films. She continued her studies in Paris from 1970 to 1972 with a scholarship from the French government, and in 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Malani has had retrospectives at Centre Pompidou, Castello di Rivoli, and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, as well as thirty solo presentations in museums around the world. She participated in group exhibitions and biennials worldwide, and her work is in the collections of more than thirty public institutions.