Visit to MCA Chicago's "Production Site: The Artist's Studio Inside-Out"

Hi there, Salina here... this is my first post from the Windy City... and windy indeed!

I decided to spend my first afternoon checking out my favorite cultural institution in Chicago. So, about a 10 block hike from the conference hotel and several bitter gusts of wind later, I arrived at the Museum of Contemporary Art to observe a performance by Indian artist Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUHPQ8xMLuA


The performance took place over two full days as a part of the longer running Production Site exhibition, and the remnants of the performance are to be on display through the rest of the run time of the exhibit. I caught the tail end of Chopra's soberly slow performance, in which he existed in a large room where the intersection of art studio and fictional narrative were enacted via a fictional character or persona (somewhat based on ideas about his grandfather). The walls were no longer white when I arrived. They were covered in nearly 12 foot high, obsessive charcoal markings often taking the shape of repetitive spirals leading towards the ceiling. The large spirals were indexical of the artist's sweeping movements across the gallery walls - or should I say - studio walls. The walls were completely covered in the dark markings, and as you walked through the space (well, I did) you could see a thin layer of charcoal dust all over the floor and the artists' footprints within it. There were key areas in the room that delineated previous actions, such as a washing area for the artist (chair, old-fashioned shaving tools, a bucket of water, etc.) and a creation area (ladder, basket of charcoal) and an eating area (table and chair and food on the table). There was even an area with a strange wig and a black outfit laid upon a mass of dirtied white fabric... perhaps an apparel-changing area? The room was so very silent as the artist moved slower than a sloth to perform his tasks, dressed like a 19th century dandy at the time. It was easy to get absorbed in his absorption.

Chopra, or "Yog Raj Chitraker", was sitting at the table eating a piece of bread from a loaf when I arrived. My immediate reaction was to enter the space, however most people were looking in from the doorway or only hovering near it. A little hesitant to enter, I looked in and saw the artist's room and really, really wanted to go in. So after I asked and found out it was okay, I walked into his performance space, the "studio" and observed the beautiful and somewhat manic charcoal markings all over the walls. There wasn't a whole lot of white left there... there was a lot of filling in of empty spaces and some markings were like a child filling in voids or delineated spaces in a coloring book. I stepped over a layer of charcoal dust on the floor and walked around the different relics of the last two days of performance, and I realized that the room was very charged with the idea of a working space, a true studio. It felt very lived in and yet very sterile, like the creative process was tethered to some kind of anxiety, some personal anxiety. I did not go near the artist in the corner of the room because of this. It felt suddenly strange to be walking in his space and not talking with him, like I was ignoring the host. Then I felt I had to leave and let him continue to be gazed upon by the spectators at the door. But it was so important to have had the experience of getting close to some of the relics of performance and getting into the space as the artist/performer was still engaged, still a part of the piece of art that the whole room embodied. I left the space feeling sad that I didn't get to learn more about this character from the previous two days... that I would only be able to imagine what had been.

I wandered a bit more through the exhibition, found some other really interesting and different perspectives on the idea of the artists' studio - some more literal, some with more concept depth - but I kept wanting to go back to the hyper slow performance in the other room. I did, and found that the artist was standing up and heading towards the entrance of the room. Very, very slowly. About forty feet and twenty minutes later, he made it to the front doors of the MCA (about 6 minutes prior to MCA closing time) and when he stepped out into the cold outdoors, his pace became normalized suddenly and it was like he was rushing off onto a very important task. But I realized that when he started trodding down the steps of the museum and walked off along the sidewalk into the city where you could no longer see him, that it was a relative perception and that he wasn't really rushing off anywhere. He was converting his pace from hyper slow to normal... and so it seemed that he rushed. But in retrospect, he really just left the building and walked off like any other civilian would. He literally went home (I think?). He is a Chicago-based artist and I actually imagined him walking to his home or taking the transit in the city, dressed in costume, top hat and all. It was a good ending, though I had not seen the beginning.

Tomorrow starts the conference... a beginning that I wish had no ending!