Artist, Nalini Malani: My name is Nalini Malani. I’m an artist. I live partly in Bombay, partly in Amsterdam.
I was very intrigued by a story of Bertolt Brecht called “The Job.” That's what the animation is about. And the main character is a woman who has two small children, and her husband passes away. So she dresses as a man and takes her husband’s job as a night watchman. But to be dressed as a man was considered a criminal act, and she is caught and imprisoned.
My gallery had a glass door at its entrance, and I pasted a sheet of paper on that door and I drew and painted. With gessoed paper, I can remove things easily. I do a wash and then the image drips. Then I start to draw again and that’s how I work. But I couldn’t have done this by myself. I had a cameraman and it was a stop-motion animation. Somebody had to be clicking.
The very problem of not having a job and then the woman having to do what she had to do—we must talk about it. Even now there are cases when women take on jobs that should so-called be for men. But for the same job, women’s wages are much less. It’s something that we still are speaking about as feminists.
Memory: Record/Erase, the title actually came at the time when we started to have our own computers at home, and these were the words that were coming into our vocabulary. But one of the things I would say is that it’s important to remember things. So memory record, but not erase.