Overview

Costume Design: Loise Braganza
Photography: Shivani Gupta
Curator: Jitish Kallat

A man is sitting relaxed in the middle of a cell. He is stripped to his underwear and has his face and body blackened. He eats, sleeps, and –most importantly- draws on the walls behind him. Around him, onlookers ebb and flow, while the artist, oblivious to his audience, continues to perform.
The artist, whose characters are generally built around India’s colonial past, takes on the persona of the Black Pearl who inhabits a cell and, on the walls, draws focally the Periyar—Kerala’s longest river that runs through its middle. The Black Pearl refers 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 armored, yet defeated—and is also a metaphor for that ubiquitous spice which has drawn traders to the Malabar Coast for long’’, he adds.

“La Perle Noire: Aspenwall House.” Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi. https://www.nikhilchopra.net/home/?p=3683