New Delhi / Venice: The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) announces Nalini Malani – Of Woman Born, a major site-specific commission and official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In this large-scale multichannel installation, Malani extends her pioneering “Animation Chamber” series— a multisensorial environment since 2017. The continually appearing and disappearing images transform the heritage site of Magazzini del Sale into a “thought chamber” reverberating with sounds, texts and images on women, myth, and global conflict. The presentation is curated by Roobina Karode, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Nalini Malani – Of Woman Born is inspired by the Greek myth of Orestes, who murdered his mother and her lover to avenge their slaying of his father. Though pursued by the Furies for his act, he was saved from punishment by the goddess Athena. Malani meditates on this myth and its resonance in present-day wars, where accountability is an anomaly and women continue to bear the brunt of patriarchal violence. Translated by the artist into 67 animations with more than 30,000 iPad drawings that are projections of nine video channels. The drawings and the 20-minute soundscape of women’s voices become a layered, visceral, continually shifting environment in which viewers conjure up their own stories from the layered superimpositions.

Nalini Malani said: “The daily experiences that are happening in the world make you want to clench your fists, grit your teeth, to shout out – in a moment of hysteria – standing with your back against the wall when the tragedy of life takes the upper hand. Politically engaged, cross- cultural and historical dialogues have been the basis of my art making for sixty years. All the more today I feel it is a pressing necessity as our stories have to be retold, to give us a chance to become a more humane society.”

Kiran Nadar, Founder and Chairperson, KNMA said: “Nalini Malani is one of the most vital voices in contemporary art today, whose practice has, for decades, articulated a fearless ethical position on violence, displacement, and the silencing of women. ‘Nalini Malani – Of Woman Born’ is an urgent and uncompromising extension of that vision. KNMA is proud to present this Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, reaffirming our commitment to supporting artists whose work speaks from India while addressing the world.”

Roobina Karode, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, KNMA said: “Malani compels us to understand that ‘Nalini Malani – Of Woman Born’ is not a sentimental invocation, but it is a political demand, a demand that we recognise Janani, the generative mother. She is not just a figure to worship in abstraction but as the one whose labour, suffering, resistance, and premonition must be foregrounded, centred, and honoured. ‘In Minor Keys,’ Koyo Kouoh’s curatorial vision of attunement to subtle frequencies and quiet signals, Malani’s repetition, exhaustion, and refusal of closure finally find their proper frame. To listen to women, to hear the voices of the silenced, to witness the violence that patriarchy enacts against the nurturer, requires precisely this willingness to remain in exhaustion.” 

For more than fifty years, Malani’s practice has functioned as an unsparing critique of majoritarianism and its multiples of violence. Malani has expanded to embrace multiple mediums, formats, and cultures combining the hand-painted and the digital and bridging the historical and the contemporary. 

KNMA has played a sustained curatorial and scholarly role in the presentation of Nalini Malani’s practice. In 2014, KNMA organised the artist’s landmark year-long retrospective in three chapters, You Can’t Keep Acid in a Paper Bag, in New Delhi. The Museum has also supported key international exhibitions, including The Rebellion of the Dead at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Italy (2018). Among the more than 50 institutions worldwide holding Malani’s work, KNMA maintains the most comprehensive collection, spanning nearly six decades of her oeuvre, reinforcing the Museum’s commitment and subsequent presentation at Venice.

The Collateral Event Nalini Malani – Of Woman Born, organized by KNMA, will take place on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from Saturday, May 9 to Sunday, November 22, 2026 (pre-opening on May 6, 7, and 8).

The Skipping Girl

Recurring throughout Nalini Malani’s artistic language is the figure of ‘The Skipping Girl’, a symbol of freedom. Her ability to move constantly and to coordinate her movements keeps her free from being controlled and from all coercion. In many ways, ‘The Skipping Girl’ personifies the artist herself, traversing mythology, memory, and time as a witness and survivor. It resonates both with Malani’s feminist perspectives and with the language of her art.

During the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, visitors are invited to ‘Follow the Skipping Girl’ on posters, banners, and vaporetto signages through the streets of Venice to the Magazzini del Sale. The scannable QR code will also allow visitors to download and preserve fragments of Malani’s digital animations. This city-wide activation transforms pockets of the city into an interactive animation chamber, turning every encounter with The Skipping Girl into a portal for dialogue and engagement

Public Programs

To extend the exhibition’s dialogue, KNMA will host a robust series of public programs in Venice throughout the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, offering a deeper engagement with Malani’s artistic practice. The pre-opening week (May 6-8 2026) will feature a conversation among Nalini Malani, Roobina Karode, and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. This public programme is further enriched by an exhibition publication with contributions from Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Roobina Karode, Emily Butler offering scholarly insights into the artist’s practice.

From August to October 2026, the exhibition will be activated by a curated suite of intergenerational workshops designed to engage participants with the themes, materials, and narrative strategies that shape Nalini Malani’s practice.