Nalini Malani excels in creating dramatic images out of a diversity of materials – as seen in her accordion books that use monotype, photocopy, drawing and painting; her theatrical productions in collaboration with directors, actors, musicians and designers; her video installations created with several streams of imagery channelled on to screens and revolving cylinders and her single-channel animated videos that record the repeated etching and erasing of images. The Karachi-born artist, who has been practising for four decades, is committed to her message. By her own admission, the woman as de-gendered mutant, violated beyond imagination, is an ongoing preoccupation. Seducing her audience with colour and imagery, she draws us into a dialogue on topics of a socio-economic nature that impact our daily lives but get sidelined.

You are one of the two Indian artists selected by curator, Robert Storr for the 52nd edition of the Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind, which is on view till November 21. What are you showing?
I have a large room to myself in the Italian pavilion, where I’m exhibiting a 14-metre-long painting called Splitting the Other in panels that are 2m high and 1m wide. I am depicting a composite female figure that comes out of Brecht’s Mother Courage in 14 panels. She’s also an Ophelia figure that featured in my 2000 work, Hamletmachine. Lots of emotions are running through it; the work is like a continuous narrative. As you move from one panel to the next, you find sub stories. It’s like an epic.

Why do your female protagonists assume epic proportions?
I have always liked the epic format, even in literature as there is so much to discover. Working with female protagonists over the last three decades, I found a lot of anomalies. In India, people raise a woman to the level of a goddess and then bring her crashing down. She is the booty during wartime, and she has to wear the accoutrements of a particular religion (whether it is the veil or the bindi) – so she becomes the embodiment of the culture that the male prefers. These are things that go into my work.

Your choice of medium for these paintings is unusual.
I use something that is not considered high art; it’s more in the realm of folk art – reverse paintings done with acrylics and enamel on acrylic sheets. I got attracted to the form because of its history. In the 17th or 18th century, Chinese traders brought erotic images painted on glass from China and sold them in South India. The painters from Tanjore were captivated by the technique and began to make religious pictures using the same medium. So, the profane became sacred. I’d like to bring back that eroticism in the same format.

You recently held a preview at Sakshi Gallery of your solo show in Dublin that will run from July 11 to October 14.... Could you tell us more about it?
I have been given seven rooms at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In one of them, I’m showing my video installation, Mother India, which was seen at the Venice Biennale in 2005 at ICON, organised by Bose Pacia. Another work is a set of 15 paintings on female protagonists like Medea, Sita and Radha. There is another installation, a shadow play, in a huge room. It’s a single cell animation, shot frame by frame, then animated and shown as a loop. There are several registers of images.