UTOPIA!?
Event
This will be the first exhibition in Portugal of celebrated Indian artist Nalini Malani (Karachi, Undivided India, 1946). Widely known for her paintings and drawings, the exhibition in Serralves shows an equally significant side of her work, but with which audiences are perhaps less familiar, featuring exclusively her animations produced between the late 1960s and the present day.
It was at the end of the 1960s, in an Indian art scene dominated by men, that Nalini Malani emerged as a provocative and feminist voice, equally pioneer in working with artistic media such as experimental cinema, video and installation. In addition to giving women a voice, the artist has always stood out as an artist concerned with social issues, giving prominence to marginalized people through visual stories (animations, in particular) that explore themes such as feminism, violence, racial tension and post-colonialist legacies.
The animations brought together at the exhibition in Serralves, made between 1969 and 2020, were grouped under the sign of Utopia (this is, in fact, the title of the oldest work featured here), relating, on the one hand, to the utopian feeling that followed India’s independence and, on the other hand, the disillusionment with the path country had taken, governed by rules dictated by religious orthodoxy. In any case, Malani's work transcends national traumas to deal with globally social injustice. This is the case of the large immersive installation that closes the exhibition, which consists of nine video projections of animations and phrases. Can You Hear Me? although it was based on a violent story that took place in India involving the violent death of a child is an ode to all of those who have no voice. Produced between 2017 and 2020, the installation consists of animations in which images by the artist overlap and fragments of quotes of influential writers such as Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Bertolt Brecht, Veena Das, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Milan Kundera, George Orwell and Wislawa Szymborska. According to the artist, Can You Hear Me? corresponds to the type of animation that she has been focusing on recently, to what she calls notebooks, and which are digitally created on an iPad. Malani has already stated: “When I see or read something that captures my imagination, I have a need to react with a drawing or drawings in motion. Not exactly in its mimetic form but more like a 'Memory Emotion'. I feel like a woman with thoughts and fantasies shooting from the head. Each of them may contain different ideas and may not feel like it is from the same person. Each of these voices in my head needs therefore a different penmanship.”
It was at the end of the 1960s, in an Indian art scene dominated by men, that Nalini Malani emerged as a provocative and feminist voice, equally pioneer in working with artistic media such as experimental cinema, video and installation. In addition to giving women a voice, the artist has always stood out as an artist concerned with social issues, giving prominence to marginalized people through visual stories (animations, in particular) that explore themes such as feminism, violence, racial tension and post-colonialist legacies.
The animations brought together at the exhibition in Serralves, made between 1969 and 2020, were grouped under the sign of Utopia (this is, in fact, the title of the oldest work featured here), relating, on the one hand, to the utopian feeling that followed India’s independence and, on the other hand, the disillusionment with the path country had taken, governed by rules dictated by religious orthodoxy. In any case, Malani's work transcends national traumas to deal with globally social injustice. This is the case of the large immersive installation that closes the exhibition, which consists of nine video projections of animations and phrases. Can You Hear Me? although it was based on a violent story that took place in India involving the violent death of a child is an ode to all of those who have no voice. Produced between 2017 and 2020, the installation consists of animations in which images by the artist overlap and fragments of quotes of influential writers such as Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Bertolt Brecht, Veena Das, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Milan Kundera, George Orwell and Wislawa Szymborska. According to the artist, Can You Hear Me? corresponds to the type of animation that she has been focusing on recently, to what she calls notebooks, and which are digitally created on an iPad. Malani has already stated: “When I see or read something that captures my imagination, I have a need to react with a drawing or drawings in motion. Not exactly in its mimetic form but more like a 'Memory Emotion'. I feel like a woman with thoughts and fantasies shooting from the head. Each of them may contain different ideas and may not feel like it is from the same person. Each of these voices in my head needs therefore a different penmanship.”
