Nalini Malani: Mythology, Memory, And Multiplicity In Contemporary Indian Art

In 2018, contemporary Indian artist Nalini Malani had two major solo exhibitions in Europe— notable given that late in life, her deeply culturally specific artwork was receiving a mainstream European audience. In a South Asian cultural landscape disrupted and complicated by its recent colonial past, Malani has emerged as a figure who radically encapsulates many of the concerns of India’s present-day art production. This thesis investigates Malani’s appropriation of the mythological heroine Sita in her artwork, through which she comments on the treatment of contemporary Indian women. Through the evolution of her depictions of women like Sita, Malani’s artwork acts as a defiant rebuke of fundamentalism while also speaking in a shared visual language drawing heavily from past tradition, iconography, and narrative. Ultimately, Malani’s work fills an important gap in the Indian national consciousness by serving as an exercise in remembrance, in reclaiming agency, and in raising awareness of the female trauma that has been intertwined and conflated with the project of nation building.