"Sensory Phenomemas", Amiad Center, Jaffa 2022
In this performance art, Chanchal refers to the experience of smell, touch, sound and sight. He used his body while referring to childhood memories recalling children's games in muddy ground during the monsoon rains when he and his friends threw mud at each other. By smearing the body with turmeric, he recalled religious rituals worship in temples in India. The Bollywood music that accompanies the show contains elements of Sufi classical music of a meditative nature. Chanchal's body movements express different emotions such as joy and pain. The show took place around a mobile installation of sacks full of cotton hanging from the ceiling. Chanchal lowered the sacks with a pulley and dipped them in a bowl of water containing a yellow pigment.
"Yellow" performance, "Yellow Immigration", Artist's House, Rishon LeZion, Israel, 2022
In India yellow is a sacred color. As part of the Indian wedding rituals the bride and groom spread their bodies in turmeric ointment and rose water, that are considered to purify the body. The origin of the yellow pigment is from India. until 19th century it was extracted from the urine of cows fed only on mango leaves.
In the performance Chanchal emerged down the gallery stairs as a shamanic king from a tribal culture.
He replaced his headdresses and attire with a variety of yellow and golden masks and crowns and painted the plastic flower he had found on the street a few days earlier with a yellow spray.
"The Taj Mahal" Installation and performance, "Beware! The Tiger is Coming", The Lab – Experimental Art Space, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2021
At the age of ten Chanchal exerted himself in building a model of the Taj Mahal. It was preceding the Diwali festival, when children in Chanchal's hometown were engaged in the traditional building of miniature mud, clay, or plaster structures called 'Gharondas'. This tradition marked the return of the heroic prince Rama to his kingdom of Ayodhya, after fourteen years of exile in the forest.
But his father, angry at him for making a big mess, crushed the model. The next day, Chanchal rebuilt the model. Friends and neighbors gathered around to view the magnificent work of art, and praised Chanchal's talent. Chanchal's father came home from work and witnessed the acclaim; this time, he did not destroy the model. A collective affirmation of a personal act may turn into a personal affirmation. Here, we see assaulting turning into generating.
In the openning of the exhibition Chanchal performed the show of destruction and rebuilding at the opening of the exhibition is an act of destroying and rebuilding an ideal - the cultural myth around which a community ties its existential dreams and fantasies; the repeated act of destruction carried out by the visitors serves to heal that traumatic memory. Destruction and rebuilding is a common political feat in India where the powerless are prey to the actions of the powerful.
"Beware! The Tiger is Coming" performance, The Lab – Experimental Art Space, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2021
On one of the walls Chanchal painted an image of a man disguised as a tiger, attacked by a real tiger. The Indian version of Aesop's parables. The Indian animal proverbs are based on an age-old tradition of oral stories, passed on by word of mouth by special caste members who specialized in folk theater with costume, dance, singing and acting skills.
In 1989, the film "The Tiger Dancer" (Bagh Bahadur) by the famous Bengali director Buddhadeb Dasgupta, was released. The film was a lyrical masterpiece, depicting the tension between the village and the city in developing India. The plot depicts a dancer, who returns to his village after one year to participate in the annual festival where he will dance the tiger dance, his desire and distinct talent. A traveling show by a tiger catcher, takes all the attention and no one come to watch his dance.
The film inspired Chanchal's performance in the exhibition space. Together with the sound man Nir Yaakov Younesy, he created a synthesis between the drumming rhythm that accompanies the dancer in the film, pats on his body, the ringing of bells, background noises and growls that he made.
"Jatra" performance, "Beware! The Tiger is Coming", The Lab – Experimental Art Space, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2021
Jatra (to go out in procession) is a kind of popular folk theater in northeast India. It is a very lively form of musical theater and draws its plots from a number of sources, such as Hindu mythology, popular legends and even current events.
The theater was created in the 15th century as part of the Bhakti movement, where Krishna followers went singing and dancing in processions and in their frenetic singing sometimes got into trances of acting which culminated in the courtyards of the temple. The Jatra gained widespread popularity in the 18th century, and during the colonial period, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was used to convey political messages.
In the performance Chanchal acted the story of the Buddha. Born as a carefree prince, he gradually discovered the suffering of real life outside the palace. The play depicts the disillusionment from the illusion.