Goa-based artist’s 52-hour ‘performance work’ based on the spice trade drew huge crowd
While most of the artists at KMB were racing against the clock to meet the deadline for the global art festival, Nikhil Chopra was sitting around his venue-relaxed with a roll-up. “My work starts only after the biennale starts,” said the Goa-based artist about his 52-hour continuous performance.
Chopra’s work turned out to be one of the most talked-about works at the ongoing fair. His performance room at the colonial Aspinwall House witnessed a huge gathering early Saturday evening.
From then, Chopra’s work titled le Perle Noire: le Marais was on. A native of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, his characters are generally built around India’s colonial past. Here in this ancient coastal city, he took on the persona of the Black Pearl who inhabits a cell and, on the walls, draws focally the Periyar — Kerala’s longest river flowing from east to west along the middle of the slender state.
On Sunday, people looked in through the arched windows and, on seeing Chopra perform, invariably moved into his room. There, the artist continued his show that had begun after he slowly stripped to his underwear, having blackened his face and body before painting the walls dark. For 52 hours of his performance in the cell, he ate and slept, which was a part of the show.
The performance ended last evening with a musical performance by a two-member band of vocals and harmonium.
“I have been mulling over the idea of what I would do if I were invited to the biennale,” said Chopra, who graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts at Baroda’s MS University and went on to study in Ohio, USA. “This is India’s premiere art event and I was immediately excited to be a part of it.”
In fact, Chopra’s almost entire body of work fits in perfectly with Jitish Kallat’s curatorial theme of Whorled Explorations which essentially looks back at Kochi’s colonial history starting with maritime trading. To be precise, Chopra’s “fictionalised historical characters are built with the idea of peeling through many layers of political and personal history.” The Black Pearl is a reference to pepper and the region’s spice trading past.
Chopra notes that the Black Pearl is both ruler and subject; monster and angel. “He is armoured, yet defeated and is also a metaphor for that ubiquitous spice which has drawn traders to the Malabar Coast for long,” he adds.
Art experts say it is a bold performance that has been brought to conservative Kerala, that’s drawing attention. “I want to be able to talk to women, children…and touch everyone. I want it to be a democratic experience. But I expect the audience to engage repeatedly. You don’t get anything from one viewing and just as I do, the audience too should push limits,” says Chopra.