Nalini Malani’s The Rebellion of the Dead. Dialectical Images in a Dialectical Exhibition

Between 2017 and 2019 a major retrospective was dedicated to Nalini Malani (Karachi, 1946) “artiste pionnère de la performance, de l’art vidéo et de l’installation en Inde”; such exhibition was held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. Focusing on the Italian venue, this short essay questions the possibility of reading the exhibition through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s concept of dialectical image. In order to do so, the main references are Mieke Bal’s and Livia Monnet’s essays in the Italian catalogue and unpublished documents preserved in the current archives of the Castello di Rivoli.