He was The Black Pearl — the ruler and the subject, the monster and the angel. Looking outside from his window, at the Periyar river flowing at a near constant pace, Nikhil Chopra drew its tides on the empty walls of his cell at the Aspinwall House. The busy harbour juxtaposed against the lush green streets of Fort Kochi and the lone ship that appeared in the horizon. “It was armoured, yet defeated, and is also a metaphor for pepper, the ubiquitous spice, which has drawn traders to the Malabar Coast for long,” says Chopra, about the character he donned at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The elaborate black gear he wore for the performance has now been put away, but his charcoal drawings are on the walls of the venue for another three months — the entire duration of the Biennale. They speak for him, what the 40-year-old saw when enclosed inside the cell. Stripped to his briefs, with a blackened face and body, this is where he slept and ate for 52 hours (several hours less than his longest ever performance of 99 hours, in San Gimignano, Italy, in 2012). The duration was long enough though for the crowd to marvel, as they waved him adieu — Chopra tardily approached a boat and travelled into the horizon that he drew.
