Neha Choksi

Iceboat
2012-2013
HD video, color, stereo sound
13 minutes 17 seconds


INSTALLATION AT HAYWARD GALLERY PROJECT SPACE

INSTALLATION AT PROJECT 88, MUMBAI

VIDEO STILLS

ARTIST NOTE

In Iceboat the artist dresses in white, as if a renunciate or a devotee, and sets herself to row a boat of ice until the boat melts and releases her into the waters.  The ultimate melting and floundering is a real experience of loss made vivid in a staged and measured way (just as in Minds to Lose and Leaf Fall).  The material of ice is familiar.  We know it will melt and lose buoyancy and give a clear end to the performance. It will lighten and relieve.

The artist approached the performance as a poetic exegesis not only on the effort to stay afloat despite the inevitability of failure, but also on striving and surrendering, on coping and release, resistance and collapse. There is nobility and absurdity to the material surrender that hints at the ultimate bodily forfeiture we all must accept.

Iceboat is the third work in a trilogy on reticence, absenting, withdrawing, and disengaging. The first two are Leaf Fall and Minds to Lose.

CREDITS

A film by Neha Choksi | Camera: Prasann Jain, Hiroo Keswani, Malay Kumar Ray, Madhusudan Shi, Vikram Kumar Amladi (underwater) | Editor: Arindam Ghatak | Assistant Editor: Neha Choksi | Sound Design: Neha Choksi | Costume: Suzie Vickery | Thanks to the Shroff Family for the location at Lake Pawna

RELATED WORKS

Aftermath
2012

The Drop
2008

Petting Zoo
2008

Leaf Fall drawings and paintings
2009

Minds to Lose drawings
2008—2010

Glow
2008