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M+, Hong Kong. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2018, © Nalini Malani
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Mediatheque
Nalini Malani 納里尼．馬拉尼
Penelope 潘妮洛普
2012
This short stop-motion animation is titled after the wife of the Greek hero Odysseus. While her husband was away on the many adventures described in Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope fended off suitors by continually weaving a funeral shroud by day and unweaving it by night, claiming she could not remarry until it was finished. While Penelope’s actions are usually praised as a model for wifely devotion, Nalini Malani undercuts such readings through her surreal, unsettling imagery. In homage to Penelope’s cyclical work, Malini builds up a drawing of distorted multi-limbed creatures surrounded by floating faces and eyes, which she repeatedly erases.
Born in Karachi and educated in Mumbai and Paris, Nalini Malani pioneered video art in India. Her family’s experience of displacement during the 1947 Partition of India strongly influenced her early life, and her later activism. Over her long and prolific career spanning film, installation, and painting, she has continually examined the ways political conflicts and social structures affect women and other marginalised communities.
Born in Karachi and educated in Mumbai and Paris, Nalini Malani pioneered video art in India. Her family’s experience of displacement during the 1947 Partition of India strongly influenced her early life, and her later activism. Over her long and prolific career spanning film, installation, and painting, she has continually examined the ways political conflicts and social structures affect women and other marginalised communities.
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