Galerie Lelong & Co. is pleased to announce Nalini Malani’s solo exhibition Crossing Boundaries at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec, Canada, also the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada. The exhibition will remain on view through August 20, 2023.
Nalini Malani: Crossing Boundaries decries complacency in the face of inequality and encourages collective engagement with the most pressing concerns of our time,” explains Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA and exhibition curator. “Steeped in literature, philosophy, history and mythology, Malani’s unique visual language asks us to reflect on both the beauty and the injustice in the world. The MMFA is proud to be presenting the first solo exhibition in Canada dedicated to this boldly innovative and engaged artist.”
The exhibition showcases profound and powerfully engaged works by Malani, who has been addressing social inequalities and violence through her artistic practice for more than 50 years, giving voice to the subjugated, marginalized, and oppressed, especially women. The exhibition consists of her critically acclaimed video installation Can You Hear Me? (2018-2020), the latest iteration of her Wall Drawing/Erasure Performance series, City of Desires—Crossing Boundaries (1992-2023), executed on site at the MMFA, and a brand new video projection, Ballad of a Woman (2023), commissioned for the MMFA’s Digital Canvas.
Ballad of a Woman (2023), is a major work created specially for the exhibition, and is projected on the facade of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, as part of the MMFA’s Digital Canvas project. This hand-drawn animation tells the story of a woman who is murdered and, in her afterlife, cleans up the traces of her death, protecting her killer. For Malani, this act after death symbolizes the undue burden of self-sacrifice borne by women since time immemorial. In this major new work, the bold colours, dramatic movement and dynamic lines of the film camouflage its darker message, like so many of life’s distractions that make suffering harder to discern.
This exhibition is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It is curated by Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA.
About the Artist
Widely considered the pioneer of video art in India, Nalini Malani explores drawing, painting, and the extension of those forms into projected animation, video, and film. Her works in new media often take the form of monumental and immersive shadow play pieces that create mesmerizing layers of imagery and sound. Committed to the role of the artist as social activist, Malani focuses on creating dynamic visual stories about those who have been ignored, forgotten, or marginalized by history. Drawn from history, culture, and her direct experience as a refugee of the Partition of India and the legacy of colonialism and de-colonization, Malani’s work explores violence, the feminine, and the politics of national identity.
Malani’s work is represented in numerous public collections worldwide including the Asia Society Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai, India; National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi, India; British Museum, England; and Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands.
Malani recently presented major solo exhibitions at the National Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2023); Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia (2022); M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2022), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2021); Serralves Museum, Portugal (2020); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts (2016); and Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, France (2010). Her solo exhibition The Rebellion of the Dead: Retrospective 1969-2018, was showed in two parts at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2017) and Castello di Revoli, Turin, Italy (2018). The artist was recently awarded the Joan Miró Prize and the National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship with Art Fund.
Malani was born in 1946 in Karachi, India. She currently lives and works in India and Europe.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1380 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1J5, Canada