Nikhil Chopra: Blackening: 3157

About

Chopra will create Blackening: 3157—a one-off, 48-hour performance based around one of the museum's most iconic steam locomotives, taking influence from that engine's own story and the role that railways played in the Partition of India, 70 years ago.

Well known for these long-duration improvised performance pieces, Chopra's work will include changing, costumed personas; a live soundscape from DJ Masta Justy; and a large scale, charcoal drawing that will take shape throughout the weekend. The performance marks Chopra's return to Manchester after his piece Coal on Cotton at The Whitworth in 2013 (pictured below).

Locomotive No. 3157 was built in 1911 at the Vulcan Foundry in Merseyside. Many locomotives built in the North West of England were exported around the British Empire. The Vulcan served on both the North-Western Railway of India before Partition in 1947, and on Pakistan Railways after.

Engines like this one would have moved some of the 15 million people that were displaced at that time. For Nikhil Chopra, whose own family were affected by that chapter in history, No. 3157 represents the glory of British ingenuity and the legacy of British rule in South Asia, but also the darker side of the fight for independence culminating in Partition. 

Here he is talking about this object, its history and his work:
https://youtu.be/kNDUzm8aRwE