My Reality is Different, Nalini Malani (2022) (EMPIRE LINES x Holburne Museum, National Gallery)

We're back offline, and into the deep black exhibition space of Bath's Holburne Museum, where artist Nalini Malani coats fresh layers upon classical paintings from the National Gallery in her new installation, My Reality is Different.

Artist Nalini Malani disrupts Western linear perspectives – in art, and in history. In My Reality is Different, the viewer is engulfed within a dark cavern, a panoramic 40 metres of wall space, shot with nine overlapping video projections all playing in a continuous loop. With tens of iPad-drawn animations. she adds layers to classical paintings from the National Gallery and the Holburne Museum in Bath. Born in 1946 in Karachi, British India, and now practicing in Mumbai, Malani has always radically questioned conventions of painting and drawing. She talks about reworking well-known works of art from alternative, and critical, perspectives, highlighting histories of the subaltern, women, and the colonial and imperial sources of wealth behind contemporary art collections.

Nalini Malani: My Reality is Different runs at the Holburne Museum in Bath until 8 January 2023, and then the National Gallery in London from 2 March to 11 June 2023.

You can read my review of My Reality is Different in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/nalini-malani-my-reality-is-different-review.

For more, listen to the curator ⁠Priyesh Mistry⁠ on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/f62cca1703b42347ce0ade0129cedd9b

PRESENTER: Nalini Malini, Mumbai-based artist. In 2020, she became the first-ever artist to receive the National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship.

ART: My Reality is Different, Nalini Malani (2022).

IMAGE: 'Nalini Malani in front of Caravaggio’s 'The Supper at Emmaus' (1601) at the National Gallery'.

SOUNDS: Extract from My Reality is Different, Nalini Malani.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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