This event follows a performance by Nikhil Chopra, and is part of the Kettle's Yard 'Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan' exhibition, curated by Devika Singh, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.
Biographies
Nikhil Chopra
Nikhil Chopra, born in Calcutta, lives and works in Goa and was trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda before continuing his studies in the United States. His work is situated between performance, theatre, live art, sculpture, photography and drawing, often in the form of largely improvised and durational performances with large-scale drawings and props left as remnants. Chopra frequently addresses issues of identity, autobiography and the disparity between urban and rural landscapes in colonial and postcolonial contexts. For instance, in 2009–10, he performed under the persona of Yog Raj Chitrakar, a fictitious landscape painter based on the artist’s grandfather. In his own words, the artist’s performance as Chitrakar, which translates from Hindi as ‘picture-maker’, enabled him to explore personal memories and collective histories of being ‘hung over by the nostalgia for the British Raj yet reeling in the success of the Indian freedom struggle’.
Catherine Wood
Catherine Wood is Senior Curator, International Art (Performance) at Tate Modern and works on performance projects, exhibitions, collection acquisitions and displays at Tate Modern, as well as being actively engaged in research. Wood was instrumental in founding the performance programme at Tate in 2003 and has, since then, programmed over 200 live works by artists including Mark Leckey, Tania Bruguera, Trisha Brown, Katerina Seda, Bojana Cvejic, Ei Arakawa and others at Tate and within the online space ‘Performance Room’ that she initiated in 2011. In A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, Wood traced a dynamic relationship between painting and performance emerging in the post-war period, working back from contemporary artists’ perspectives. Contributing to the International Monitoring Group, specialising in strategies for collecting performance, Wood has worked on acquisitions of works by artists including Joan Jonas, Tino Sehgal and Suzanne Lacy.
Co-organised by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational and Kettle's Yard.
