NALINI MALANI
BEYOND PRINT. MEMORY, TRANSFERENCE, MONTAGE

Nalini Malani was born in Karachi in 1946. As the pioneer of performance and video art in India,  she is one of the most influential artists of her generation. Since the early 1970s, she has been denouncing violence against women, especially within Indian society. She has been developing an engaged type of art by letting her mythical characters, symbols of insubordination, tell contemporary stories.

Although her world is political, it seems fantastic at first glance. Without central perspective, it refers to the Indian miniatures and to the paintings by Jérôme Bosch. Nalini Malani names the Garden of Earthly Delights as one of her greatest sources of inspiration. The artist mixes and manipulates the ideas and cultural stereotypes in order to express a vision of the world in which the boundaries are fading away.

As a multimedia artist, Nalini Malani is one of the first designers in India who expanded her painter’s practice by developing art books, ephemeral wall drawings, shadow plays and various video projections. Her art takes us beyond the printed art.

Nalini Malani wanted to present the PAO collective’s graphic novel as a long frieze interwoven with collages she made in collaboration with students of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

The museum in La Louvière is divided into 3 rooms on 3 different floors, for a surface of 1200 m². It is the first time that a museum dedicates an exhibition connecting her installations to her printed works. It will be the first exhibition of Nalini Malani in Belgium.

• Alongside the NALINI MALANI exhibition: Thierry Verbeeck  Installation within the framework of Watch this Space # 7
and Pascale-Sophie Kaparis Figures mentales