Nalini Malani

Fragments of myths, texts, and contemporary realities merge in Nalini Malani's large, immersive installation 'Of Woman Born'. It forms the centerpiece of this first solo presentation in Scandinavia of the influential and outspoken Indian artist.

One of the most powerful voices in contemporary art, Nalini Malani explores memory, violence, displacement, and resistance. Born 1946 in Karachi, just before the Partition of India, she was a small child when her family was forced to flee and settle as refugees in Bombay (now Mumbai), where she continues to live and work today.

Influential and outspoken, Malani stands as a pioneer of video art in India and is widely recognized for six decades of politically engaged work based on historical and cross-cultural dialogues.

More than 30,000 drawings form a sequence of digital animations in which fragments of myths, texts, and contemporary realities merge in a layered and continually shifting environment.

The work takes its point of departure in the Greek myth of the Oresteia where Orestes kills his mother to avenge his father and is ultimately absolved of punishment. For Malani, this story resonates in a contemporary world where patriarchal violence is repeatedly committed in the name of justice or self-defence, while accountability remains elusive.

“The daily experiences that are happening in the world make you want to clench your fists, grit your teeth, to shout out – in a moment of hysteria,” she states. It is precisely against this backdrop, that Malani seeks to direct our attention to those who most often bear its consequences – especially women, hence the implicit innuendo in the title Of Woman Born.

In her work, girls and women not only emerge as victims and witnesses to history, however, but as figures of endurance, resistance, and transformation. A skipping girl forms the central figure of the piece.

The exhibition also includes select examples of Malani’s work in painting and drawing, presenting for the first time the series Goodbye Girl Child, 2022, consisting of 53 drawings.

Nalini Malani participated in the ‘Homeless Souls’ exhibition at Louisiana in 2019. The upcoming exhibition is Malani’s first solo presentation in Scandinavia.

The work Of Woman Born was commissioned by the KNMA Museum, New Delhi, on the occasion of the 61st Venice Biennale, 2026, where it premiered as a Collateral Event.