Nalini Malani has a story to tell about her idol Joan Miró whose generous spirit is behind the eponymous award she received in May. Malani had met him in the early 1970s’ Paris where she was an art student in the city’s colourful and intense creative scene. The excitement of that encounter still stirs the slim bespectacled artist whose women-centric narrative has global resonance. She says, “I had studied his work through books at home and was thrilled to see it for real at Paris exhibitions. Then I met him at a solo gallery show. He was very kind and generous for such a famous artist. The prize is by a foundation he started himself, which affirms his belief in artists of the future.
It has imagined space for art other than his own. It also emphasises his utmost belief of life in art.” Every two years, the Fundació Joan Miró and Obra Social “la Caixa” honours one contemporary artist whose creations capture the spirit of the celebrated Spanish surrealist’s work.
A Partition baby, 72-year-old Malani’s family moved to India when she was just a year old. They landed in Calcutta, before settling in Mumbai. Though she can hardly remember the details, her art is influenced by the bloody displacement of millions. “Leaving one’s homeland is painful. It took a long time for my grandparents and parents to overcome the trauma and settle down in new surroundings. My memories of growing up are coloured by the Partition,” she says. The Joan Miró Prize acknowledges Malani’s ‘longstanding commitment to the silenced and the dispossessed’.
A protégé of the legendary S H Raza, her work space for over the quarter of a decade is a studio in Mumbai’s Lohar Chawl. After returning to India from Paris in 1973, she shot a documentary on a Muslim slum in Bandra. It was also where her first encounter with displacement took place—the slum was razed by the municipal corporation while she was working. How difficult was it to become a voice for the voiceless? “The chawl and its people are part of my daily existence. I drew them from memory. I am compelled to incorporate the life of the dispossessed and pavement dwellers into my lexicon of images. I find a strange dignity in their poverty,” adds the artist, who has worked across genres such as wall drawing, installation, shadow play, multi-projection works and theatre. “Drawing is the keyboard from where my compositions emerge—the materials depend on the exigency of my subject matter. My passion is to create immersive environments where the viewer is totally surrounded by images such as shadow plays and large paintings.”
Upon arriving in Mumbai, she realised that very few women artists were being talked about within the community. In 1979, she started and participated in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ —a project that focused solely on them. “Pilloo Pochkhanawalla and I sought funding for six years. But nobody in India was interested. In the meantime, sadly Pilloo passed and Arpita Singh suggested that four artists, including us, Madhavi Parekh and Nilima Sheikh, start it ourselves. We organised five shows from 1987 to 1989.”
Malani is gearing up to exhibit in Spain in 2020, at the Miró Foundation. Her work has been allotted several rooms in the Museum where her eclectic sensibilities will find expression through video play and wall drawings. Is she planning a solo exhibition in India? “I have several works in progress,” she says enigmatically.
In October 2017, the Centre Pompidou in Paris became the theatre of Malini’s creativity with The Rebellion Of The Dead, part of a two-part retrospective of India from 1969 to 2018. Its second installation is on view at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin. The work is a political statement on issues like feminism, violence and nationalism. Malani, who is often considered “a pioneer of video and performance art” isn’t done yet.