Vestige is one of a handful of cameraless images Nalini Malani made in Mumbai. To create these photograms, she did not use a camera but made paper cut-outs and employed an enlarger to expose photosensitive paper for specific lengthsof time. Malani was fascinated by urban modernist forms and the play of light with geometric forms and architectonic shapes. This work was made in the late 1960s when she was associated with the experimental group known as VIEW (Vision Exchange Workshop), which emphasised an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to art making.
Nalini Malani (b.1946, British India) is a pioneer in video art. 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.