The Breath Within the Breath: Contemporary Performance Art Practices in India

Abstract

This dissertation examines contemporary performance art practices in India, with a particular focus on the work of three artists with diverse approaches to this ever-evolving art form: Ratnabali Kant, Samudra Kajal Saikia and Nikhil Chopra. The performances that serve as the focus of my analysis took place during the period of 1985 to 2012. In my examination of specific performances, I weave together strands of performance studies, histories of performance art and theater, and a theoretical analysis of “the performative” nature of society at large. The works I examine question the ways in which historical memory is itself performed through national spectacle, the reiteration of social norms, and the production of subject formations.