Friday 23 May 2025
10:30 am - 6:30 pm
From Land to Fire (2025) refers to Swansea’s industrial past: it was once known as ‘Copperopolis’, and (like Bombay, now Mumbai, where Chopra lived for years) was a vital port city during the high noon of Empire. Using slurry from the Port Talbot Steelworks, which morphing to a new model of steel production, Chopra alludes to the possible death of industrial Wales. If Chopra’s performance includes tongue-in-cheek nods to the dandy Glynn Vivian (and the latter’s love of dressing up), he will also don the garb of industrial labourers – the coal miner, the steelworker, the factory hand – drawing parallels between ‘Bombay’ and Swansea’s Imperial and industrial histories.
From Land to Fire (2025) is generously made possible by CELF National contemporary gallery for Wales.
Free, Everyone welcome.
No booking required. Drop in and join us any time.
Nikhil Chopra’s artistic practice interweaves drawing, live art, photography, sculpture, and installations. His largely improvised performances dwell on identity and its construction, autobiography and authorship, the pose and self-portraiture, reflecting on the process of transformation and the role of duration in performance. Chopra combines everyday life, memory, and collective history—daily acts such as eating, resting, washing, dressing, drawing, and making clothes become essential elements of his art.
In recent years, studio-based drawing and painting have gained equal importance in his practice, as he continues to explore his relationship with the mountains and the sea, refining his material understanding and dexterity. His international art and theatre presence began in 2008 with invitations to Time Crevasse (Yokohama Triennale), kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Making Worlds (53rd Venice Biennale), Performa (New Museum, New York), and Marina Abramović Presents (Manchester International Festival, The Whitworth Gallery). After a research fellowship at Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität Berlin in 2011, Chopra returned to the Whitworth for the 2013 Manchester International Festival with his critically acclaimed “Coal on Cotton.” Between 2014 and 2017, he performed at the Kochi Muziris Biennale, Bienal de la Habana, the 12th Sharjah Biennial, and documenta 14. In 2019, he presented a nine-day solo performance, “Lands, Waters and Skies,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In March 2023, he concluded a six-month residency at Art Explora, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, followed by major solos at Galleria Continua, Paris, and most recently at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, in January 2024.
Nikhil Chopra was born in Calcutta in 1974 and currently lives in Goa, where he runs HH Art Spaces with partners. After completing his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayaji Rao University in Baroda, he pursued further education in the United States, earning a Master’s from Ohio State University in 2005. Chopra and HH Art Spaces have been announced as the Curators of the upcoming sixth edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2025.
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