“I could never have stayed overseas… because India was a new country, and as artists we had to come back and build that country.” It is close to midnight and it seems fitting that I am video calling Nalini Malani from Ahmedabad, in the politically prominent state of Gujarat. We are discussing the beginning of Nalini’s career, one that has now spanned over five decades and does not show any sign of slowing down. She is speaking to me from Amsterdam, on her way to Bath to install a new show at The Holburne Museum.
Finding words to describe Nalini’s practice is not an easy task. Born in 1946, a year before the Partition of India, she has witnessed the growing pains of a nation post-Independence. To unpack and analogise the political and social upheavals, her practice draws from mythology, anthropology, theology,
