Overview

In the space of three years, between 2007 and 2010, Nikhil Chopra undertook a dozen performances around the world, which, together, form the ‘Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing Series’. The name Yog Raj is a nod to familial histories rooted in the era of the British Empire. The act of drawing was, and remains, central to Chopra’s activity during performances.

Memory Drawing VII (2009) was performed over 48 hours as part of the main exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennale, curated by Daniel Birnbaum and titled ‘Making Worlds’.

Chatterjee & Lal is pleased to exhibit the performance residues, which are being shown for the first time since the original performance nearly two decades ago.

“So, after days or hours of ceaseless activity, the viewer is left with complete stasis. Chopra’s stillness acts on the body of the viewer, imposing its own temporality The twin sensations of exhaustion and exhilaration that have overtaken Chopra’s physical countenance, generated as a result of the performance becomes palpable.

Each Memory Drawing opposes the segmentation of time into abstract units, they emphasize a restoration of the prelapsarian continuity of time, grounded in the individual’s bodily experience.”

~ Shanay Jhaveri

(excerpt from ‘As His Hair Scatters and Regrows’ written for the 2010 monograph on Nikhil Chopra, ‘Yog Raj Chitrakar’)