Fed on tales from Kashmir, Gargi Raina and Nikhil Chopra share a common liability of time and memory. Although far removed from the condition of the present day plight of the Kashmiri Hindu community, they negotiate with the memory they were not physically a part of. However, they differ potentially in terms of formal/conceptual choices, modes of narration and the use of mediums/materials. Nikhil shares the space involving the irony of an evermigrating exilic condition anticipating a certain sense of loss, perhaps a feeling of being betrayed, and a yearning to return home. His artistic endeavors to negotiate this existential condition of cultural dislocation, this state
of homelessness in the course of shifting homes from one place to the other, came by way of interventions into imagining the past and creating the fictional characters drawn from his ancestral history.
Nikhil’s performance became somewhat of an extension to the fixed venue-bound site, making a kind of bridge by walking down to Lal Chowk, which is in the heart of the city. He used his body as the most vital material for an array of makeovers by masking/unmasking himself to evoke a specific narrative. Recalling an evolutionary consensus to the conceptual/formal position enjoyed by performance art in general and Joseph Beuys in particular, Nikhil’s first act involved shaving a few months old beard he was growing for this performance. In the premises of the main venue he chose the chinar tree, one of the iconic images of the picturesque Kashmir of old, as an offstage space for makeup, turning it into an onstage performance enacting the whole process or preparation from undressing to putting on a new costume. The royal costumes of his grandfather who enjoyed an elitist life during British times became the new skin Nikhil masked himself with.
