Paris Hangover

More than 30 years later, the memories of those days in Paris resonate in her works. ‘‘I want to make that which is invisible visible,’’ she says.

Recently, her video installation Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, which dealt with the unrecorded experiences of thousands of women from both sides of the border, who were abducted and raped during the Partition, was invited for a screening at the Venice Biennale. It will also travel to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, in November.

Born in Karachi, Malani escaped to Kolkata with her mother during the Partition (her father managed to cross the border a year later). “Many desperate cries of women were silenced because their experiences were never accounted for, till sociologist Veena Das’ essay Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain brought it up,’’ says Malani, whose video was inspired by the essay.

For three decades, she has been obsessed with her women protagonists. Ancient Greek myths, the trials and tribulations of Sita, the Ecstasy of Radha and the mutilated lives of women after the Partition and the Gujarat riots figure in her work. Malani has reinterpreted and reinvented epic tales and explored women’s stories through paintings, videos, installations, theatre and short films.

‘‘Hers is an art of excess, of going beyond boundaries of legitimised narrative, exceeding the conventional and setting up a constant flow of dialogue between our aspirations to beauty, poetry, progress and justice, and the fundamental flaws of human nature with its capacity for acts of unimaginable horror committed in the name of ideas,’’ says art historian Chaitanya Sabrani.

Malani considers herself a painter first. ‘‘I’m most articulate with my paintbrush. Everything I do is an extension of my paintings,’’ she says, currently working on a series of reversed paintings in mixed media. This time around, it’s Lewis Carroll’s Alice. While Malani shuffles between Pune and Mumbai working on her solo show at Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai, slated for February 2006, two decades of her paintings are currently being exhibited at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

Exposing the Source: The Paintings of Nalini Malani opened in August this year and will be on display till August 2006. This potent body of work is based on three themes: Woman’s Room—women’s roles and experiences as an allegory of our time; Undercurrent— paintings that look at the underlying realities of urban life and the consequences of man-made ecological disasters; and Stories Retold—Malani’s interpretations of classical Indian and European epic narratives and modern drama.

Right now though, Malani is in Wonderland. The idea germinated a year ago when she found an annotated copy of Alice in Wonderland with original illustrations by John Tenniel at the Crossword bookstore. ‘‘It’s such a fascinating story. I’ve turned the animals into real people, it’s so much fun to see how Alice finds her way around them,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m interested in the mind of a young girl and curious about what will emerge from her interactions with my older protagonists such as Radha and Sita.’’

Expect magic when the imagination of Lewis Carroll and Nalini Malani collide.