Indian artist on how female oppression fuels new giant video at Hong Kong’s M+ Museum, and why she refuses to stay silent over historical grievances
- Indian video-art pioneer Nalini Malani’s ‘In Search of Vanished Blood’ gives voices to the minorities – especially women – on whose bodies history is written
- She says the world is going backwards and ‘the new narcissist is someone who thinks they are not going to die’. Her solo exhibition at M+ runs until September 4
In 2020, in the Indian city of Mumbai, the artist Nalini Malani decided to screen a new work called Can You Hear Me? to as many people as possible.
The Indian video-art pioneer had it projected on the outside wall of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, one of the most luxurious and certainly most visible of hotels in her home city, which can be seen from miles away.
The work consists of a series of stop-motion iPad drawings, shown at breakneck speed, that reference violence, chaos and how writers such as Hannah Arendt address the dark sides of human nature. The drawings were originally posted on Instagram during Covid-19 lockdown.
No feeling was spared for the guests inside the five-star establishment. She wanted people to know why she began the series.