The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

NALINI MALANI UNDERTOW Of the numerous visual icons that belong solely to the twentieth century, the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud must surely be one of the most powerful. The macabre beauty of the explosion of a nuclear bomb has indelibly marked our living memory and fundamentally changed our global political frameworks. Nalini Malani's work Remembering Toba Tek Singh 1998-99 (Queensland Art Gallery Collection) uses footage of the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the mushroom clouds are the central projected images on the walls of the installed space. There are four other projections, two of which are positioned either side of the central projection and feature Malani's 'mutant' drawings, now animated as a filmic montage of figures that melt and reform. They resonate alongside the nuclear blast as reminders of the physical consequences of nuclear radiation. The other two projections face each other on opposing walls. They show two women attempting to fold a sari, an act that is doomed by the unbridgeable gap of real space that separates them. On the floor are twelve video monitors housed in tin trunks, wherein video montages feature a tumble of imagery about the cycles of life, birth, death and exodus, remembering those countless people affected by the ravages of modern violence. Nalini Malani's work from the 1990s has seized on the sensual landscapes that the cinematic and the theatrical are able to offer. Her methods of harnessing this sensuality include video installations as well as more reduced forms that take on proto– cinematic aspects, such as the transparent drawings on motorised, revolving mylar cylinders, lit from within to cast moving shadows. 1 Malani has lived in Bombay since 1956, when she moved there with her family at the age of nine. As the city has a dominant cinema industry, it seems almost natural that she should extend her drawing-based practice to engage with cinematic elements. Although drawing still remains a key aspect of her work, and is an essential part of the video montages, the pull of the moving image and the powerful cinematic presence in Bombay suggests a compelling connection by Malani with this form. Her drawing practice ranges from concertina books, artist's books, reverse glass and mylar works that explore immediate environments, to large murals that are also visual components of performance works. Malani is an artist attentive to the political cross-currents of life, deeply committed to environmental issues and histories of degradation, especially where they attach to the results of a nation's colonialism. Ashish Rajadhyasksha conceptualises Malani's work as a 'site for playing out the utopias and anxieties of all that is seen as being "outside" the given agendas, programs and reassurances that shape our present'. 2 The mutant images that appear as ghostly apparitions in Remembering Toba Tek Singh evolved from a series of drawings made in the early 1990s incorporating distorted, disturbing, phantom figures. These nightmarish figures refer to catastrophic events such as the infamous Bhopal gas leak disaster. Such references, however, are only one facet of Malani's work. Others include her interest in the place of the female body in visual iconography, and assumptions (Indian, Western and global) about gender and the worlds of the marginalised. 74 APT2002 Top: The artist working on her 'Mutant' drawings in 1996 The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery Below: Mutant I - Mutant VI from 'B series' (detail) 1995-96 Fabric dye and chalk on milk carton paper Six pieces: 180 x 120cm (each, approx.) Courtesy: The artist and Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai The use of erasure as a concept and as a method of image making plays a vital role. The drawn figures deliberately disintegrate into shadow as images of obliteration and abjection, then coalesce and reform as animations on film - the subjects of which are those communities of people who fall outside the unarticulated events of history. 3 Understanding the nature of global flows of information, the privileging of perspective, and what eminent Indian critic Geeta Kapur terms the 'populace of unknown sins and all-too intentional crimes',4 Malani's practice is committed to looking at the spoils and consequence of excess. Nalini Malani India b.1946 Remembering Toba Tek Singh 1998-99 12 stills from 20 min. video installation comprising 17 VCDs, 5 data projections, 12 television monitors, 12 tin trunks, blankets, sound Dimensions variable Purchased 2000 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Collection: Queensland Art Gallery