In an act of performance art, artist Nikhil Chopra grew a moustache to take on the garb of Yograj Chitrakar, before he lugged a giant canvas through the streets of Mumbai to come up with two massive charcoal drawings
In an act of performance art, artist Nikhil Chopra grew a moustache to take on the garb of Yograj Chitrakar, before he lugged a giant canvas through the streets of Mumbai to come up with two massive charcoal drawings
From January 15 to 17, Nikhil Chopra walked the streets of Mumbai in the garb of Yograj Chitrakar, a colonial draftsman, in search of the perfect place from where to capture the essence of the city.
Yograj carried a 20 feet x 10 feet canvas on his shoulders all through, slept in railway station waiting rooms and battled heat, exhaustion and hunger to create two massive charcoal drawings one depicting the Queen's Necklace from the Hanging Gardens, and another, a panoramic view from the Oval Maidan.
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This was a piece of performance art an Indian city rarely gets to witness.
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Artist Nikhil Chopra with a canvas that carries a charcoal drawing of a panoramic view of Mumbai sketched from the Oval Maidan. |
The Mumbai-based visual artist has been dabbling in performance art for the last six years.
Starting in Ohio as part of a graduation project, he has travelled to Brussels, Venice, Manchester and London, taking on the garb of fictitious characters.
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The central idea of the project is to throw the character into a cityscape and explore iconic spaces through him. With the artist, even his audience becomes part of the "performance", as they stop by to see him sketch.
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"Although I live in this city, I'd never spent six hours at a stretch at the Hanging Gardens.
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It's a great place to sit down under a tree on a nice January day," says the 35 year-old artist. His audience included artists, galleryists, critics, friends and, of course, inquisitive junta.
Chopra's character Yograj Chitrakar is inspired by his grandfather, Yograj Chopra, who was a commercial artist and Chopra's role model.
Walking from Bandra to Colaba, in character, to make the drawings was the central guiding factor of the performance.
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"There was a desire to experience the city in a way that I don't when I rush through its roads everyday.
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For me, it was about going down the road that I go down every day, but slowing things down so that my experience became visceral."
With performance art, Chopra wants to move out of the gallery. His work snuggles somewhere between painting, photography, theatre and sculpture.
Having walked all the way back to his studio after completing the project, Chopra is now preparing the drawing for an exhibition that is scheduled for March.
