The Cassandra in you..

Paramjot Walia

‘You Can’t Keep Acid In A Paper Bag’ brings home some of the installations and international projects of Nalini Malani, one of the foremost artists of India today, that have never been shown before. Paramjot Walia reviews.

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Saket, is showcasing Chapter 2 of Nalini Malani’s Retrospective (1964 – 2014) – ‘You Can’t Keep Acid In A Paper Bag’. The exhibition is the second in a three-part retrospective of Nalini Malani’s works, happening for the first time in India at KNMA. The exhibition is an experience interweaving myth and reality. Nalini Malani’s works become a condition, a state of being that defines both the protagonist and the viewer. Her works call for a need to question the dogmatic and saturated culture making way for a fresh approach. Born in Karachi in 1946, Nalini came to India as a refugee of the partition of India, an experience that deeply influences her art. Even if her works are fuelled by her struggle as a refugee of the partition and as a witness to Babri Masjid riots, her delicate and sensuous ‘subject’ under the intriguing layers of imagery comes out strongly. The show is focused on showcasing Malani’s Medea Project, which first took place in 1993 at the Max Muller Bhavan in Bombay (a branch of the Goethe Institute). Through Medea, which is Heiner Mueller’s adaptation from the well-known Greek myth interpreted by Euripides, Nalini aesthetically explores the basic characteristics like desire, revenge, violence and betrayal.

Whereas in another painting she blesses the protagonist, ‘Sita’, with a new identity; an identity which is beyond apprehensions and virtually constructed boundaries of morality and power. Through her female protagonists whether Medea, Sita, Radha, Akka, Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Malani tries to de-gender woman in this male dominated era. The other project showcased in Chapter 2 is titled ‘Listening To The Shades (2008)’, a suite of 42 paintings weaving together images of war, protests, human anatomy and deities, inspired by the ancient Greek story of the Trojan princess-prophetess Cassandra .Cassandra, of Cassandra (1984) by the East German cultural critic Christa Wolf is a Greek mythological prophetess who lives in a dilemma every moment as she enjoys a gift of foreseeing the future but accompanied with a curse of never be believed. For Nalini, Cassandra epresents the repressed woman whose opinion is mocked at and smothered by men. Nalini incorporates myths in a way that they become an allegory for reality and contemporary social issues. She contemporizes and re-invents long-standing myths, outrightly addressing social concerns and subtly protesting it.