Nikhil Chopra works at the boundaries between theatre, performance, live art, painting, photography and sculpture. He devises fictional characters that draw on India’s colonial history as well as his own personal history. He inhabits these characters in largely improvised performances that last up to three days.

Chopra’s most recent character, Yog Raj Chitrakar, is loosely based on the artist’s grandfather, Yog Raj Chopra. Educated at Goldsmiths College of Art, London in the 1920s, Yog Raj Chopra was a frequent open-air landscape painter who spent much of his time capturing the grandeur of the Kashmir Valley.

Yog Raj Chitrakar has many faces: explorer, draughtsman, cartographer, conqueror, soldier, prisoner of war, painter, artist, romantic, dandy and queen. These are signified by the elaborate costumes, which are changed throughout performances to indicate the character’s transformation.

The performance at the Serpentine began with the artist, dressed as Yog Raj Chitrakar removing his tent and props from the Gallery and setting them up outdoors. Throughout the performance, he made large-scale drawings of what he saw in the landscape around him: architecture and nature. At the end of the three days hung the drawings in the Gallery, and took his props and collapsed tent back inside where they will remain for the duration of the exhibition as a remnant of the performance.

Costumes designed by Tabasheer Zutshi