Nalini Malani

A unique and compelling view of the work of leading contemporary artist Nalini Malani through the lens of her most recent commission

This publication presents the latest work of Nalini Malani (b. 1946), recipient of the 2022 National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship with ArtFund. 

For over five decades, Malani’s art has focused on giving a voice to the stories of those marginalized by history⁠—particularly women. She is one of the most incisive artists of our time, and the acute analysis and poetic compassion of her experimental film, photography, painting, and drawing has influenced generations of others from the 1960s to the present day.  

For her first museum commission in the United Kingdom, Malani has created an immersive installation of large-scale, animated drawings inspired by the sites, histories, and collections of the National Gallery, London, and the Holburne Museum, Bath. With a floating palimpsest of digital images, Malani reveals, annotates, and shares new, underlying stories in some of Europe’s best-known paintings, offering a contemporary and critical dialogue between past and present. 

With leading articles based on new research, sumptuous illustrations, and artist-led design, this extensive study documents the Fellowship alongside the artist’s previous work.