Nalini Malani

5 July - 15 August 2003

Remembering Toba Tek Singh 1998-99

Remembering Toba Tek Singh was a significant new-media installation created by internationally acclaimed Indian artist Nalini Malani. Shown as part of the Asia-Pacific Triennial in 2002 at the Queensland Art Gallery, the work dealt with the ongoing implications of the 1947 separation of India and Pakistan, and was a reaction, specifically, to nuclear testing in both countries.

In Remembering Toba Tek Singh the iconic clouds of nuclear detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are juxtaposed by the large-scale images of two women from India and Pakistan attempting to fold a sari–an act that is doomed to failure on account of the unbridgeable physical space that separates them. Images encompassing the cycles of life, birth and death are seen alongside drawings which Malani has animated as a filmic montage of figures that melt and reform; a provocative reminder of the physical consequences of nuclear radiation.