National Gallery, London
2 March – 11 June 2023

Nalini Malani (b1946) is the recipient of the National Gallery’s first contemporary fellowship, and the resulting exhibition, a single artwork titled My Reality Is Different, is nothing short of spectacular. Engaging with paintings from the National Gallery’s collection and that of the Holburne Museum in Bath, Malani has created a monumental work in the form of overlayed video and animation played on a continuous loop in a format of her own making – an animation chamber. The installation here comprises more than 40 metres of wall space, 25 new animations and nine large video projections with accompanying soundscape. It wraps around viewers, or participants, as Malani prefers to call them, sharing the artist’s experience and vision of her selected paintings, reinterpreted and re-presented through her reality.

The animation chamber – a deep black gallery space in the heart of the National Gallery – is brought alive with Malani’s video projections. The chamber is, as the artist commented during a press conference, the melange of ideas in her head wrought large on the gallery walls. She began working in this way after experimenting with iPad animations, initially shared on Instagram, then projected to establish how robust they were. Her first animation chamber, exploring the horrific story of the violent death of a young girl in India, was Can You Hear Me?, made between 2017 and 2020 and giving a voice to the stories of those, such as this child, marginalised by history. The format itself is something of a continuation of Malani’s constant questioning of the conventions of painting and drawing to reach a wider audience and speak out against oppression.

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