Nikhil Chopra performance art ends today at the MCA: Photo Gallery
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Upon an initial viewing, Indian artist Nikhil Chopra’s space at the MCA resembles a sparcely furnished studio apartment. A few pails stand in a cluster, a table with cloth-covered bowls of fruit towers over a discarded banana peel, an electric razor and kettle stand independently on the concrete floor as if part of a rogue interior decorator’s wacky vision. The walls are covered in circular charcoal lines, which appear to be rising out of the floor, extending toward the ceiling. On the other wall, the quick, choppy charcoal lines resemble an attempt to represent a field of grass. Amidst it all, motionlessly lies the artist himself in a black, spandex bodysuit on a crumpled sheet, looking around uninterestedly. His hands and feet are black with charcoal and nearby is a brunette wig and a pair of women’s black heels, part of an earlier costume.
Beginning yesterday at the museum’s 10 a.m. opening, Chopra has stepped into the figurative shoes of a fictional character named Yog Raj Chitrakar, named after his grandfather Yog Raj Chopra. In Sanskrit, Chitrakar can be translated to “picture-maker” or “mask-maker” and Chopra underlines this notion by visibly transforming the space into his own studio, part of the MCA’s Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out exhibition. Chopra shows the studio as the artist’s space to work out inner anxiety and conflict through the observation of the creative process including more mundane facets like rest and food consumption (he eats another banana slowly, but deliberately while I’m there). On a deeper level, Chopra’s performance is meant to consider gender and ethnic roles and India’s British colonial history. His undertaking is a large one to encompass, but if nothing else he has succeeded in changing the pace of the museum, says Jackie Terrasa, a member of the MCA education department. People meander the museum for as many as four hours, always backtracking to check in on Chopra.
Of course it’s easy to miss one of his metamorphoses. Since the start, Chopra has already gone through a costume change and plans one more before his big exit out of the museum at 5 p.m. today dressed as an 1800’s-style “dandy,” a man deeply concerned with dress and physical appearance, a full transformation from Chopra’s original, traditional, Indian loincloth.
Stop by the MCA before close today to see the finale for yourself, and if you’re lucky you might even spot the artist’s mother in the audience, who has been in to observe her son several times.
Photos: Andrew Nawrocki
