Nalini MalaniCassandra’s Gift

Nalini MalaniCassandra’s Gift

18 January - 22 February, 2014

D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024T +91 11 46103550/46103551 | E art@vadehraart.com | W www.vadehraart.com

Introduction

“The contents of Cassandra’s Gift are concentrated on the possibility that humankind foresees the events of the future - that he/she really ‘listens’ to what is happening around. Often this listening is (self) blocked and our (over) communication goes in all directions but is not effective. Instead of experiencing the community, the political world and nature as one organism, we live by economic and military principles of divide and rule.”

Nalini Malani

In Nalini Malani’s works myths often combine with historical events and enter what she terms the ‘contemporary psychic arena’. They speak of traces, of repressed memories that re-surface in the present. For the Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition, as the title suggests, Nalini Malani returns to the tragic figure of Cassandra from Greek mythology. Cassandra bears the curse of Apollo: her prophecies are to be distrusted and her voice will remain unheard and strangled. Apart from the Gallery exhibition, Nalini Malani will also hold her first ever retrospective in India at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (between January and November 2014). Titled You Can’t Keep Acid in a Paper Bag, the retrospective is presented in three chapters and showcases key works made between 1969 and 2014 across all mediums, including painting, photography, film, drawing, prints, video sculpture, theatre, performance and video/shadow plays. In all these years Nalini Malani has received much international acclaim for her relentless experimentation and extension of the pictorial surface and her consistent feminist position. The Vadehra Art Gallery is very pleased to be part of this celebration of the artist Nalini Malani and to provide Delhi audiences with the chance for a sustained engagement with her complex and compelling practice.

Vidya Shivadas

Note on In Search of Vanished Blood

In the video play In Search of Vanished Blood, we hear the inner voice of a woman who is brutally gang raped. The multi-layering adresses two types of violence, the defensive and the aggressive pertaining respectively to femininity and masculinity. It creates a provocative environment whose imagery revolves around complex themes such as the curse of prophecy, the fatal position of the woman in Indian society, and the failure of human communication.The work In Search of Vanished Blood started out as a six channel video/shadow play for dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012. Later the same year Nalini Malani developed it into a new site-specific single channel video play for the Kochi-Muziris Biennial. Here the backdrop was an existing world map that spanned one of the walls that had the USA in the centre. This gave the work a whole new reading. The USA being the dominating world economic and military power since World War II, becomes the eye of the storm from time to time as the backdrop of the violent animation scenes in certain moments appear like a growing skin ailment on the female protagonist.At the Vadehra Art Gallery in 2014 the work has yet another reading with a room filling backdrop of pink coloured pages of a financial paper. Surrounded by a stream of uncontrollable data, that rules our lives, the drama of destiny is thus staged. Where lies our sense of agency?The title of the artwork comes from Agha Shahid Ali’s translation of the Urdu poem Lahu Ka Surag by the Pakistani left wing intellectual and revolutionary poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The soundtrack is inspired by a selection of texts from Heiner Mueller’s Hamletmachine, Samuel Beckett’s Krapps Last Tape, and the short story Draupadi by the Indian social activist and writer Mahasweta Devi, translated by Gayatri Spivak.

In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012Site specific, single channel, video play, sound, 11 minutes

In Search of Vanished Blood-1, 2012Archival pigment print embellished with acrylic paint on Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, 34 x 44 inEdition of 3 and 1 AP

Note on Artist Books

In the last decade Nalini Malani was twice invited to publish an artist collaborative book project related to the subject of Cassandra. This resulted in collaboration with the artist/curator Robert Storr in Listening to the Shades published by Charta in 2008. In his essay Robert Storr elaborates on the questions “How will we be told the worst? Who will tell us? Who will pay heed?”. In this golden edged book the facsimile print of the forty two reverse paintings Nalani Malani retells the story of Cassandra in which her insights are ignored and considered heretical. Cassandra symbolizes for Nalini Malani the unfinished business of the women’s revolution.In 2011 on invitation by dOCUMENTA (12) Nalini Malani collaborated with the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai on the publication The Morality of Refusal published by Hatje Cantz. In his essay, Arjun Appadurai reflects on the significance of Gandhi’s ideas on non-violence as a form of political action in India, pursuing the thesis that Gandhi’s thought and practices exhibit a double genealogy. Nalini Malani responds to this essay with drawings that sometimes overlay the text, sometimes accompany it, sensually reflecting Arjun Appadurai’s elaborations.When Nalini Malani started in the late eighties to make artist books this was not a medium found in contemporary Indian art. As her studio building in the market area of Lohar Chawl was under repair and not accessible, she had to change her medium. As she wanted to continue working a movable studio (a studio out of a bag) in the format of the artists’ book project was the solution. As such Nalini Malani began in 1989 to work on a series of limited artist’s books entitled Hieroglyphs of Lohar Chawl and Degas Suite, in which she attempted to negate the idea of the unique by making series of photocopies on paper and Mylar of her monotypes, which she embellished with watercolour. Besides these hardbound books, she made accordion books entitled, Dreamings and Defilings, Caste Off and Musings. This was followed in the nineties by a series of collaborative hand-made books with the Australian female artist Fiona Hall, where some were made together at the kitchen table in Bombay, while for others the pages traveled back and forth to Sydney by post.

Cassandra (Detail), 2008Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Bamboo paperEdition of 3 and 1 AP

Connections: Later the Same Day, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet

on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper 60 x 30 in

Note on Reverse Paintings

Nalini Malani’s trademark reverse paintings constitute the fundamental core of her practice. Working with ink, acrylic and enamel on the reverse side of clear surfaces like Mylar, acrylic and Lexan sheets, Malani has used the medium’s possibilities to develop, what Whitney Chadwick, terms “a visual language capable of encompassing eruptions of the irrational and the repressed and the way they mark the world and processes of history”.*Nalini Malani’s fluid formations, signified through traces and erasures, are in a process of relentless metamorphosis and mutation – they speak of unstable identities and relationships. The pigments leave their luminous traces on the surface, producing dream-like, multi-layered and decentred narratives. In the series Connections, the world map with wind patterns forms the backdrop for each painting. Stains of paint, which morph into organs, biomorphic and other disembodied forms, seem to connect the discontinuous islands of text and images. Against the inevitable phenomena of wind movement which cannot be contained, are encounters between individuals, the exchange of human emotions and the relationships they form. How do macro, environmental occurrences like wind patterns measure against these fragile micro encounters? Nalini Malani remains interested in drawing a relationship between these two disparate elements, examining, within the larger changing constellations of events, those passing moments between people. The short stories of Grace Paley form an important reference point for Malani, especially in the ways she generates connections between people and engages with the figure of the ‘outsider/insider’. The series Discovery of the Body is in part an ode to the artist Bhupen Khakhar, who Malani credits with having taught her the medium of reverse painting in the late 1980s. With references to Khakhar’s own journey as he came out to the world on his gay identity in the early ’80s, Malani constructs a charged discourse on the anachronism between the discovery of the body, which is a personal and an individual process, and the impositions of society and nation on the way we relate to it. And with the series Examination Table, she enquiries further into those areas of control, violence and surveillance of the body. Nalini Malani examines the current climate of accelerating violence against women and locates her characters amidst various instruments used to conduct autopsies. A young female protagonist stands in the centre, there is an irony in the way that she is marking her presence and staring out defiantly at the world and yet it is her body that is singled out for victimization and mutilation by various characters and forces.

*Whitney Chadwick, ‘Record/Remember/Relate’, in Nalini Malani: Splitting the Other, Lausanne, 2010, p.17.

Connections: Memory Record/Erase, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet

on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, 60 x 30 in

Connections: But to What Purpose, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, 60 x 30 in

(Top) Time, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, Diameter: 18 in

(Opposite top) Examination Table III, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, Diameter: 18 in

(Opposite bottom) Examination Table IV, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet on specially printed Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper, Diameter: 18 in

Discovery of the Body I, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel

on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 18 in

(Top) Discovery of the Body II, 2013 Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 10 in

(Bottom) Discovery of the Body III, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 10 in

(Top) Discovery of the Body VI, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 10 in

(Bottom) Discovery of the Body VII, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 10 in

(Top) Discovery of the Body V, 2013Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel

on acrylic sheet Diameter: 10 in

(Bottom) Discovery of the Body IV, 2013 Reverse painted acrylic, ink, and enamel

on acrylic sheet, Diameter: 10 in

Video Sketch - Penelope, 2011Stop motion animation, looped, 1 minute, 6 seconds

Note on Penelope

This video sketch is a metaphor for the burial shroud that Penelope, Odysseus’ faithful wife in Homer’s Odyssey (circa 8th century BC), wove in the day and unraveled every night as one of the many ploys to keep her suitors at bay during Odysseus’ absence – she claimed that she would choose a suitor upon completion of her work and duty to produce the ceremonial fabric in honor of Odysseus’ elderly father Laertes.The movement of the ‘weave’s’ warp and weft is an allusion toward the inventive language James Joyce employed in the final chapter of his novel Ulysses (1922) – itself a modern parallel to Homer’s epic, wherein Joyce implies the tale of Penelope through his character Molly Bloom. Here, in a section generally referred to as ‘Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy’, Joyce presents the closing thoughts of the text through the interior monologue of the protagonist, Leopold Bloom’s, wife. This speech, noted for its song-like lyrical quality, which strings together eight greatly elongated ‘sentences’, prefaces a kind of intuitive and emotional mode of thinking set against the rhetorical style of Leopold Bloom’s alter ego Stephan Daedalus. As opposed to the ‘heroic’ stylization of Daedalus’ voice, Molly’s tone is fluid, associative, and dynamic and represents a kind of Écriture feminine.

Note on The Tables have Turned

The title ‘The Tables have Turned’ is inspired by Christa Wolf’s text in Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays. It tries to show how Cassandra’s prophecies were not accepted by the King, her father, and hence, the devastation of Troy took place. This is a metaphor for other such catastrophes. Here the inner instinctive voice is ignored and then the tables turn. This shadow play consists of thirty-two cylinders on simulated, long-playing turntables that rotate at four rpm. Each cylinder is made of reverse-painted Mylar, with images that speak of death and devastation. The multi-colored fairy lights recreate the atmosphere of a fair from which the revelers have been evacuated. The images that are visible as shadows mingle with skulls, fleeing dogs, and the consorts of gods who look on helplessly. The turntables rotate but remain silent. Nalini Malani started to work on shadow plays after the theatre play The Job (1996) in which she had different reverse painted life-size Mylar cylinders that were used as pistons in the play as a device for costume and scene changes. This resulted in her first independent cylinder shadow play The Sacred and the Profane (1989) and her well known video/shadow plays like Transgressions (2001). Meanwhile for the Havana Biennial in 2000, Nalini Malani made a small four cylinder shadow play for an arched niche in the eighteenth century fortress La Cabana. Here the cylinders were not hanging from the ceiling but stood on turntables, accompanied by Billie Holiday and M.S. Subbulakshmi both singing about the men they loved. The Tables have Turned was made as a site-specific installation for the 16th Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions – Forms that Turn, in a concrete, seven-meter diameter bunker at Cockatoo Island, Sydney.

The Tables have Turned, 2008Shadow play: thirty two turn-tables, thirty two acrylic and ink reverse painted Mylar (100 x 30 cm), directional lighting, sound, text spoken by Alaknanda Samarth, 20 minutes. Dimensions variable

Nalini Malani

1946, Karachi, (Undivided India). Lives and works in Bombay/Amsterdam.

Nalini Malani secured a Diploma in Fine Arts from Sir JJ School of Arts, Bombay, 1969 and the French Government Scholarship for Fine Arts to study in Paris from 1970 to 1972. In 2010 she was conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2013 she won the Fukuoka Prize for Art and Culture.

For more than four decades, Nalini Malani has in her experimental art addressed social, political and societal issues surrounding the Indian subcontinent, including the conflict between India and Pakistan, the abuse and rape of women, and the struggle for democracy. Starting out as a painter, Nalini Malani was one of the first Indian artists who broke out of the classical painting frame in the late eighties to reach a wider audience, with installations, theatre, ephemeral wall drawings, erasure performances and video/shadow plays. Nalini Malani’s intense and committed art reveals her search for the profound certainties of life, of society, of experience-persisting ‘evidence’, which is encountered and felt.

Museum Retrospectives:

2014 Nalini Malani: You can’t keep Acid in a Paper Bag, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. 2010 Nalini Malani: Splitting the Other, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne. 2005 Exposing the Source: The Paintings of Nalini Malani, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Ma.

Museum Solo Exhibitions:

2014 Nalini Malani: Transgressions, Asia Society Museum, New York. 2013 Nalini Malani: Fukuoka Prize, Dr Bhau Daji Lad City Museum, Bombay.2013 Nalini Malani: Beyond Print - Memory, Transference, Montage, Centre de la Gravure, La Louvière. 2013 Nalini Malani, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka.2012 Mother India: Video Plays by Nalini Malani, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.2009 Nalini Malani, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth. 2007 Nalini Malani, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. 2002 Nalini Malani: Hamletmachine, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.1999 Nalini Malani: Remembering Toba Tek Singh, Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay.

Biennials:

2014 3rd Asia Triennial Manchester, Imperial War Museum, Manchester.2013 1st Kochi- Muziris Biennale, Aspinwall House, Kochi.2012 13th dOCUMENTA, Documenta Halle, Kassel.2011 1st Haein Art Project, Haeinsa Temple, Haeinsa.2008 1st Prospect New Orleans, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans.2008 16th Sydney Biennale-Revolutions: Forms that Turn, Cockatoo Island, Sydney.2007 52nd Venice Biennale-Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind – Art in the Present Tense, Italian Pavilion, Venice.2006 7th Sharjah Biennale, U.A.E.2006 5th Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei.2005 1st Torino Triennale, Castello di Rivoli, Turin.2005 51st Venice Biennial, Icon-India Contemporary, Venice.

2004 3rd Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul.2003 8th Istanbul Biennial, Poetic Justice, Yerabatan Cistern, Istanbul.2002 4th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.2000 7th Havana Biennial, Fortress La Cabana, Havana.2000 3rd Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju.1996 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.1995 1st Africus Biennial, Johannesburg.1986 2nd Havana Biennial, Havana.1968 1st Triennale India, New Delhi.

Selected Museum Collections:

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. Asia Society Museum, New York. Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland.British Museum, London. Centre Pompidou, Paris.Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka. Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.Kawaguchi Museum, Saitama. Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi.Museum of Modern Art, New York. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne. Musée de la Gravure, La Louvière. Musée de la FFT, Paris.National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi/Bombay.Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Ma. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Schoenenmuseum SONS, Kruishouten. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Wilfredo Lam Center, Havana.

© Published by Vadehra Art Gallery, 2013D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024, IndiaT +91 11 46103550/46103551 | E art@vadehraart.comW www.vadehraart.com

Design: Suhani Arora SenPrinting: Archana Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrival system, without prior permission in writing from the copyright-holder/publisher.