Nikhil Chopra: Recomposing the Live
By Meera Menezes
![](https://artasiapacific.com/rails/active_storage/blobs/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBbDdIIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--aaeeab647d85361daf279843c15e85cf714febe0/Profiles%20Nikhil%201.jpg)
NIKHIL CHOPRA, Remembering Being There (Wahan ki Yaad), 2021, still from video with sound: 16 min 30 sec. All images courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana / Rome / S
At the Dutch Warehouse in Kochi, the performance artist Nikhil Chopra was busy gearing up to launch a live art program titled “Where Do We Stand Now?” Slated for the opening week of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022 from December 13 to 17, the string of performances was curated by Chopra and the live-arts platform HH Art Spaces, and went ahead despite the Biennale’s two-week delay. The energy and buzz in the air was palpable. For the performers this was the first large-scale live event in which they had participated since the pandemic. Chopra had flown in for the week, taking a short break from an intense six-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. There he was in the middle of a new project called Recomposing the Panorama, based on his time with inhabitants of the French capital to reimagine a vision of the city. After he stared at five canceled projects as Covid-19 struck, the Goa-based artist has revived his live-performance practice once again.