About the work

Nalini Malani’s edition for Whitechapel Gallery accompanies her exhibition Can You Hear Me? featuring 88 projected animations made between 2017 and 2020. These overlapping and moving hand-drawn images and text draw inspiration are triggered by thoughts, quotes from literature and politics, as well as recent news stories.

Entitled, Babble of Voices, this print is part of a new series of works made in 2020 in the lead up to her exhibition. These works respond to the mass migration of workers from the cities of India back to their villages by foot, due to the abrupt lockdown and halting of it's national rail service due to the Covid pandemic. For Malani, social inequality created huge sorrow and anger as their concerns were not listened to. Malani’s edition Babble of Voices, 2020 depicts these workers and their tools, the reverse alphabet signifying a language which cannot be understood.  

About the artist

Embodying the role of the artist as social activist, Nalini Malani (b. 1946, Karachi, Undivided India; lives and works in Mumbai, India) gives voice to the marginalised through visual stories which often take the form of multi-layered, immersive installations, exploring themes of violence, feminism, politics, racial tensions and post-colonial legacies. Widely considered the pioneer of video art in India, Malani has a 50-year multimedia practice that includes film, photography, painting, Wall Drawing/Erasure Performance, theatre, animation and video. Winner of the 2019 Joan Miró Prize, her work has been celebrated in museum surveys and biennales around the world.

Selected Exhibitions

Nalini Malani: You Don't Hear Me (2020), Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain, Nalini Malani: The Witness (2020), Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai, India, Nalini Malani: Can You Hear Me? (2019 - 2020), Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, India, Can You Hear Me? : Nalini Malani 1969-2018 (2018), Arario Gallery, Shanghai, China, Nalini Malani: The Rebellion of the Dead: Retrospective 1968-2017 Part II (2018), Castello di Rivolli, Turin, Italy, Nalini Malani: The Rebellion of the Dead: Retrospective 1969-2017 Part I (2017), Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, Nalini Malani: Transgressions (2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood (2016), Institute of Contemporary art, Boston, USA, Nalini Malani: Stories Untold (2015), Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port-Louis, Mauritius, Nalini Malani: Transgressions (2014), Asia Society Museum, New York, USA, Print - Memory, Transference, Montage (2013), Centre de la Gravure, La Louvière, Belgium.