Stains

'Stains' shows the relationship between drawing, which is at the core of Malani’s practice, and her more recent forays into video art. Hand drawn and aminated using the stop motion techniques, she shows forms emerging out of material ablutions; figures both emerging out of and dissolving into liquid blobs which Malani says “act ambiguously toward each other: loving, hating, killing each other.”

The way in which these forms slide between recognisable figures, body parts and viscera renders the body skinless. Here the body is uncontained and in pieces. The curator and pioneer of feminist Indian art Geeta Kapur has argued that this indicates a desire to break down the boundaries between the self and others – to dissolve one’s skin and get inside another’s, thereby establishing a kind of empathy that hinges on mutual vulnerability.

Asian Art Department, AGNSW, February 2012.