The Body As Canvas

All the world’s become a stage for performance artists in India as they push boundaries, both personal and political

- Chinki Sinha

He chopped off the little finger of his left hand at a secret ceremony in 2002. Atop the lohapul, iron bridge, on the Yamuna, in the presence of a few friends. That hot Sunday morning, he had carried a surgical knife, a bottle of Betadine, a bandage, a drawing board and cameras. Then, in a Dialogue with Power Plant, Shrill Across a Dead River, he severed the digit. Almost a decade later, the memory of the pain has receded, just the stump of the finger remains.

“Extreme performance art?” “No, gentle,” says Inder Salim, who has been dabbling in the medium for 25 years.

Salim, along with a clutch of younger artists like Nikhil Chopra, Manmeet Devgun and Sahej Rahal, is pushing the boundaries of live art, as well as the distinction between the artist and the individual.

Baroda based-artist Bhupen Khakhar was perhaps the first to experiment with the genre when he began integrating pop and nouveau realiste ‘happenings’ into his artistic practice. In 1971, he staged the opening of an exhibition of his paintings in Mumbai by mimicking the rites of an Indian marriage procession and a government inauguration, cocking a snook at the excesses of both.

Then, in 1991, the launch of Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi provided an alternative platform to promote and showcase experimental art practices in India. Founded by a group of artists that included Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Kochi-Muziris Biennale curator Anita Dube and Jawahar Kala Kendra director-general Pooja Sood, Khoj has been instrumental in promoting “marginalised practices”. From live events to video or photo documentation, artists trained in visual arts use different mediums to express everything, from the personal to the political in public as well as private spaces. Portraits of a few artists...

MANMEET DEVGUN