In charting the free-flowing nature of Afrasian waters, we must acknowledge how for immemorable time the navigation and inhabitation of the Indian Ocean has been based on seasonal cycles, monsoons, and current systems. In One Water, Many Lands (2023) Nikhil Chopra evokes ecologies of water cycles that interlink the Indian Ocean with the lands it laps against. Throughout much of his work, Chopra’s performative acts are strongly connected to egress and landscape, as a means to a personal metamorphosis but also to the transformation of physical and mental spaces. Here, journeying through a marine scenery is a way for Chopra to trade the stability of the land in exchange for a liquid horizon in perpetual state of motion, from glaciers to waterfalls, to estuaries, to clouds. Incarnating a humble persona dressed in mud and cotton, he dwells on a floating platform, painting waterscapes on canvas sheets with deep blue pigments and ochres obtained from mud or clay. With a twelve-hour performance and a room-scale installation Chopra’s body acts as a catalyst, transfiguring the architecture of the Martin Gropius Bau with representations of the sea, celebrating the oneness of water, the connectedness of its ecologies, and its eternal cycles.

- Michelangelo Corsaro