The Met's Artist in Residence Nikhil Chopra Premieres a Nine-Day Performance This September
Nikhil Chopra. Photo by Stephanie Berger
The visual and performance artist Nikhil Chopra is the 2019–20 Artist in Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beginning Thursday, September 12, he will present Lands, Waters, Skies, a durational performance and installation that will unfold in multiple galleries. Chopra is the first artist in The Met's history to live within the Museum for any duration of time.
Over the course of nine consecutive days, Chopra will move through The Met, following an itinerary of his own making in order to create a landscape drawing that is monumental in size and incorporates elements of sky, land, and water. He will journey up The Met's iconic main steps to enter the Great Hall, then move on to The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing; the Medieval Sculpture Hall (Gallery 305); Modern and Contemporary Art and the installation Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370 (Gallery 399); and finally the Robert Lehman Wing.
During this performance, Chopra will inhabit personae akin to a nomadic traveler, using costumes, makeup, wigs, and masks. He will also perform original music along with collected folk songs. From September 12 to 20, he will remain completely within the Museum, immersing himself in the collection and contemplating The Met's role in preserving objects that span history and cultures as well as notions of displacement and migration. Each day he will remain in the galleries with visitors, while composing his drawing alongside a special dwelling created for this residency, and overnight he will sleep inside the Museum. This will be the longest continuous physical residency within a single building that Chopra has ever undertaken as part of his practice.
Full schedule for Lands, Waters, Skies, during Museum hours:
Thursday, September 12
10 am–5 pm
Begins at the Main Steps on the David H. Koch Plaza, and travels to Floor 1, Great Hall, and Egyptian Art, Gallery 131, The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing.
Friday, September 13 and Saturday, September 14
10 am–9 pm
Floor 1, Egyptian Art, Gallery 131, The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing
Sunday, September 15
10 am–5 pm
Begins on Floor 1, Egyptian Art, Gallery 131, The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing, and travels to Modern and Contemporary Art, Gallery 399, Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370.
Monday, September 16 and Tuesday, September 17
10 am–5 pm
Floor 1, Modern and Contemporary Art, Gallery 399, Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370
Wednesday, September 18
10 am–5 pm
Begins on Floor 1, Modern and Contemporary Art, Gallery 399, Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370,and travels to Ground floor, Gallery 963, Robert Lehman Wing.
Thursday, September 19
10 am–5 pm
Ground floor, Gallery 963, Robert Lehman Wing
Friday, September 20
10 am–9 pm
Ground floor, Gallery 963, Robert Lehman Wing
This performance installation is free with Museum admission.
Lands, Waters, Skies is a collaboration between Live Arts and the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and is organized by Limor Tomer, General Manager of Live Arts at The Met, and Shanay Jhaveri, Assistant Curator, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.
About MetLiveArts
The groundbreaking live arts series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores contemporary performance through the lens of the Museum's exhibitions and unparalleled gallery spaces with singular performances and talks. MetLiveArts invites artists, performers, curators, and thought leaders to explore and collaborate within The Met, leading with new commissions, world premieres, and site-specific durational performances that have been named some of the most "memorable" and "best of" performances in New York City by The New York Times, New Yorker, and Broadway World.
The groundbreaking live arts series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores contemporary performance through the lens of the Museum's exhibitions and unparalleled gallery spaces with singular performances and talks. MetLiveArts invites artists, performers, curators, and thought leaders to explore and collaborate within The Met, leading with new commissions, world premieres, and site-specific durational performances that have been named some of the most "memorable" and "best of" performances in New York City by The New York Times, New Yorker, and Broadway World.
About Nikhil Chopra
Nikhil Chopra's artistic practice encompasses live art, theater, painting, photography, sculpture, and installations. His performances, in large part improvised, dwell on issues such as identity, the pose, and self-portraiture, and reflect on the process of transformation and the part played by the duration of performance. Taking autobiographical elements as his starting point, he combines everyday life and collective history; daily acts such as eating, resting, washing, and dressing, as well as making large format drawings, acquire the value of ritual, becoming an essential part of the show.
From Bombay to the Kashmir, where his family comes from, to Goa, where he lives now, Chopra continues to work the mountains, the sea, and the skies that connect them into his drawings. He uses his drawings as a means of confronting the fragility of the wilderness and our place on the planet. Performance is a way of bringing attention to the process of making a drawing, presenting it as an act that is both personal and political. The labor and concentration required to make an artwork is part of the spectacle.
The artist has been exhibiting and performing globally since 2005. Participation in solo and group exhibitions include Fire Water, 2nd Yinchuan Biennale, China (2018); Drawing a Line Through Landscape, documenta14, Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany (2017); Blackening VI, Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, U.K. (2017); Bhairav, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, U.K. (2017); The Black Pearl: the city from the river, Alchemy, Southbank Centre, London, U.K. (2016); La Perla Negra, La Bienal de Habana, Havana, Cuba (2016); Use Like Water, Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015); Give Me Your Blood and I Will Give You Freedom, Singapore International Festival for the Arts (2014); Inside Out, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2012); Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing X, Chatterjee and Lal, Mumbai, and the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2010). He has also performed at Performa, New York (2008), the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and the Yokohama Triennale (2008).
Program Credits
This residency is made possible by the Bagri Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Sunil Kant Munjal and the Serendipity Arts Foundation, the Chester Dale Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
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