Mendes, Ana Cristina2021-09-222021-09-222021-09-21http://hdl.handle.net/10451/49574‘Nalini Malani: Utopia!?’, a retrospective of Nalini Malani’s animation artworks at the Serralves Museum (19 December 2020–29 August 2021), follows the development of Malani’s artistic path through a continued investment in ‘resonance’.1 As a retrospective, the exhibition includes works from the Indian artist’s first experimental colour stop-motion 8 mm animation film, Dream Houses (1969), produced at the Vision Exchange Workshop and transferred to digital medium, to the immersive, nine- channel video installation Can You Hear Me? (2017–2020). At the same time, the artworks on display document the imagining of India, probing the utopia of a nation, as reflected in the exclamation and interrogation points in the retrospective’s title. The artworks take visitors to the aftermath of political independence and partition in 1947 and the to-be-realisation of Gandhi’s utopian vision in Nehruvian modernity – the historical conjuncture and sentiment that inform Dream Houses. This essay assesses how quotation (and, generally, adaptation) functions in Malani’s artworks as a visual and acoustic way of creating resonance in the contemporary moment, thinking through ‘originals’ as a form of cultural activism.engNalini MalaniPostcolonial feminismIndian contemporary artVideo artPostcolonial studiesVisual cultureCultural activismIndiaother