La Perle Noire: Rehearsal Acts
Works on paper 2008 – 2014

Drawing resides at the heart of Nikhil Chopra’s performance-based practice. Over the last decade he has used diverse unconventional surfaces to bring alive his mark making including clothes, walls, pavements, ceilings as well as large swathes of cloth and canvas. Landscapes constitute the majority of these works. Often these landscapes are the very same ones into which the artist is about to journey.

At Art Dubai, the artist contemplates his deep engagement with drawing in the form of intimate and medium scale works that refer to specific performance environments. La Perle Noire: Rehearsal Acts brings together drawings executed across regions in India such as Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala and Goa, many of which were executed en plein air. They were made using a variety of mediums including charcoal, ink, pastels and watercolour and reveal Chopra’s remarkable accomplishment as a draughtsman, positioning him in the grand tradition of landscape painting.

Chopra’s performance, and residues of performance, is a part of the Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible curated by Eungie Joo. Here an epic nine-day journey saw the artist create drawings on carpet and canvas murals.