Galerie Lelong & Co. is pleased to announce Nalini Malani’s new solo exhibition Gamepieces at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA).
Malani’s radically inventive practice spans five decades and is celebrated in this first major Australian survey, exclusive to AGSA. Born in 1946 in Karachi in the year before Partition in the Indian subcontinent, Malani’s own history of displacement as a refugee has foreshadowed her internationally-acclaimed practice.
Literary narratives, epic mythologies and diverse political histories coalesce in the immersive sensorial encounters she creates for audiences. Always ingenious, her art encompasses painting, drawing, installation, projection, film and animation.
Drawing on AGSA’s own substantial holdings of the artist’s work, this exhibition arcs from Malani’s early experimentations in film and photography in 1969, to what she describes as ‘video shadow/plays’ such as Gamepieces, 2003-2020, after which this Australian premiere is named.
Urgent and expansive in her inquiry, Nalini Malani is dedicated to the possibility of change and the power of beauty in uncertain times.
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 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.