Nalini Malani: Splitting the Other

One of the most important contemporary artists working in India today, Nalini Malani (born 1946) employs painting, video installation, shadow play and theater-oriented works to envisage the rapidly changing political and economic situation of South Asia and the place of women within society. Mobilizing a cross-cultural and cross-epochal cast of female archetypes--from Hindu figures such Radha and Sita to such Western icons as Medea, Cassandra and Lewis Carroll's Alice--and addressing topics including war, fanaticism, economic development and environmental destruction, she melds the global with the local, the universal with the specific, narrativity with metanarrativity. Splitting the Other offers extensive documentation of Malani's memorable work in multiple media, in DVD as well as stills, as well as texts by feminist art historian Whitney Chadwick (Women, Art and Society), German art historian Doris von Drathen (Vortex of Silence) and scholar Andreas Huyssen (Other Cities, Other Worlds).