Nalini Malani

Nalini Malani (born 1946, in Karachi, undivided India) is a contemporary Indian artist, who extends the concept of "painting beyond the frame" into video plays and video/shadow plays. Her body of work includes painting, video, and installation art. Much of her work is about the middle area between two points, such as being between two places or between two identities.

Born in Karachi in 1946, Malani moved to India as a refugee after the Partition of India. Malani moved to the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, shortly before partition. She and her family settled in Mumbai in 1958. Her family's experience of leaving behind their home and becoming refugees during that time informs Malani's artworks.

Malani studied Fine Arts in Mumbai and obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art. During this period, she had a studio in the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute, Bombay, where artists, musicians, dancers and theater persons worked individually and collectively. She received a scholarship from the French Government to study fine arts in Paris. She was also a recipient of the Art Fellowship from the Government of India. She has also had residencies in various parts of India, the USA, Japan and Italy.

Malani's body of work includes painting, video, and installation art. Malani's work as a whole is concerned with the role of the repressed, especially with regard to women's issues.

For two dimensional works, she uses both oil paintings and watercolors, sometimes referencing Hindu scriptures or Greek myths. The rapid brush style evokes dreams and fantasies.

Malani's video and installation work allowed her to shift from strictly real space to a combination of real space and virtual space, moving away from strictly object-based work. Her video work often references divisions, gender, and cyborgs.Malani roots her identity as female and as Indian, and her work might be understood as a way for her identity to confront the rest of the world.

Over the past four decades, Malani has become well known in India's male-dominated art world, gaining a reputation not only as a pioneer of video art in the country but also as an organizer. In 1985, she curated the first exhibition of Indian female artists, in Delhi. In 2013, she became the first Asian woman to receive the Arts & Culture Fukuoka Prize for her "consistent focus on such daring contemporary and universal themes as religious conflict, war, oppression of women and environmental destruction."

Malani is represented by Galerie Lelong, Paris and New York.

Remembering Toba Tek Singh

Malani's video installation Remembering Toba Tek Singh is a multi-layered and complex video installation with visual, audio, and interactive components, re-examining the history of India and Pakistan during the Partition of India. The work is based on the short story "Toba Tek Singh" by Saadat Hasan Manto. includes archival footage of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, equating the Partition of India with destructive violence.