George Chakravarthi is a British multi-disciplinary artist working with photography, video, painting and performance. His work addresses the politics of identity including race, sexuality and gender, and also religious iconography among other subjects. He was born in India and moved to London, England in 1980.
He has exhibited and performed all over the UK and internationally at venues including Site Gallery, Sheffield, England; Tate Modern, London, England; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany; Dance Academy (Tilburg), Tilburg, Netherlands; Queens Gallery, British Council, New Delhi, India; La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; Brut Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria; Abrons Arts Center, New York City, USA; and City Art Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Chakravarthi has been commissioned by the BBC, Artangel, Duckie, InIVA, the Arts Council of England, the British Council, the SPILL Festival of Performance, the Live Art Development Agency, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Chakravarthi studied at the University of Brighton, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal College of Art.
Early life
Chakravarthi was born in New Delhi, India on 26 November 1969 to parents with origins in Tamil Nadu, India and British Burma. His parents considered the education of their children a priority, so the family lived very modestly in order for him and his siblings to be privately educated while in India. Chakravarthi attended St. Columba's School, Delhi, an English-medium school run by a Roman Catholic brotherhood (Congregation of Christian Brothers). Although nominally brought up as a Catholic, Chakravarthi's family encouraged him to absorb and be influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism.
In 1980, Chakravarthi moved with his family to the UK. This was around the time of the Brixton and other riots, and the peaks for organised racism and electoral success of the far-right (National Front General election results in May 1979). Mary Brennan, reviewing the National Review of Live Art in 2001, described the effect on Chakravarthi of his move to the UK as follows:
He continued his education at St. Patrick's Primary School and St. Paul's Secondary School in south London, both Roman Catholic, multi-cultural schools. He began documenting his reactions to his new environment and his changing identity through writing and drawing, and then making photographic self-portraits (initially using photo booths until he was given a camera by the sculptor and photographer Hamish Horsley).
Chakravarthi left home at the age of 16 and eventually settled in a modest flat in Greenwich, London. He had a variety of jobs including stacking shelves in supermarkets, as a go-go dancer in various nightclubs and as a photographic and artist's model. He attended a short course in photography at the Thames Independent Photography Project (TIPP) where his interest in photography and particularly making self-portraits was encouraged.
Formal training
Chakravarthi was an undergraduate at the University of Brighton. He obtained a first-class Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Performance Art. For the degree show he submitted ′Resurrection′ (a photograph 12 feet by 5 feet) and a live performance, the subject of both was The Last Supper, with Chakravarthi in the place of Jesus and women dressed in saris in the positions of the disciples, as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci. He received an award from Nagoya University for outstanding artistic achievement.
He started his postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Arts and, after taking a year out, he completed his Master of Arts at the Royal College of Art in 2003. For the final show at the Royal College of Art, he submitted ′Olympia′, a video installation based on the painting by Édouard Manet, with Chakravarthi in the position of the nude woman and a white man in the place of the black servant woman; it won him the Chris Garnham Award for 'Best Use of Photography'.
Career
Name of work/ Type Date/ Commission Exhibitions or performances Description Remotecontrol (Video installation) 1997 2002 part of 'Third Sex' solo show, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 part of 'George Chakravarthi – a solo show', Sketch, London
Chakravarthi as an androgynous person inspired by fashion photography and the politics of an 'ideal body'. Memorabilia/Aradhana (Video installation) 1998 1998 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow 1999 Dance Academy (Tilburg), Tilburg, Netherlands 2002 part of 'Third Sex' solo show, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 part of 'George Chakravarthi – a solo show', Sketch, London 2003/4 The Big M National Tour (ISIS Arts, Newcastle upon Tyne), UK An homage to Bollywood cinema. Chakravarthi plays both characters and it reflects the typical style and content of popular Indian cinema of the 1980s. However, the subtitles confront sexist assumptions and patriarchy. Genesis (Video installation) 1998 1998 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow 1999 Dance Academy (Tilburg), Tilburg, Netherlands 2002 part of 'Third Sex' solo show, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 part of 'George Chakravarthi – a solo show', Sketch, London 2007 Free To Air screening
Filmed in real-time, Chakravarthi reveals a series of emotions from happiness to extreme sadness. "[A] large-scale video projection of face and upper body, proudly showcases the artist's body, while offering a more intimate emotional aspect, which destabilises Western codes of behaviour." – Fine Art Visiting Speaker Forum Introjection (Video installation) 1998 1998 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow 2002 part of 'Third Sex' solo show, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 part of 'George Chakravarthi – a solo show', Sketch, London
"A short film about narcissism, identity, self-image, internal reflection and loss." – George Chakravarthi Resurrection (Live performance) 1998 1998 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow 1999 Dance Academy (Tilburg), Tilburg, Netherlands Chakravarthi, with a shaved head and naked, takes the position of Jesus in the Last Supper tableau as painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and he is accompanied by twelve female disciples wearing saris. Hair is strewn over the table. Resurrection (Photographic) 1998 1999 Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham 2004/5 British Council, tour of India
Still image of posed version of the live performance above. Shakti (Video installation) 2000 2001 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow 2002 part of 'Map Making', Bath Festival, Bath 2004/5 British Council, tour of India 2007 Site Gallery, Sheffield Chakravarthi as an hybrid combination of Mona Lisa and the Indian goddess Kali with a landscape of naked women in the background. Barflies (Triptych video installation) 2002 BBC and Arts Council of England 2002 Saatchi & Saatchi, London 2002 part of 'Third Sex' solo show, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 part of 'George Chakravarthi – a solo show', Sketch, London 2004 Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton 2005 La Casa Encendida, Madrid 2006 Tate Modern, London 2013 City of Women Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia 2018 - 2019 LADA Screens (online screening) 2020 LADA Summer Programme (online screening)
Chakravarthi as three specific types of transgender women filmed in bars with a soundtrack of conversations on a telephone chat line between the artist and other transvestites and those that seek them. "George Chakravarthi is what is politely known as a bundle of contradictions... The sequence follows his alter egos through three phases of transvestism, from frumpy to flirty and fetishistic... In the first piece, Chakravarthi seems to have raided a charity shop in a bid to look like his mum... In the final sequence, Chakravarthi slips into a slinky corset and... we see him confidently seducing inebriated men, having progressed from housewife to hooker in three easy stages." – Alfred Hickling Great Expectations (Live performance with video) 2002 2002 Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool Chakravarthi sitting with his back to the audience in front of a video projection also showing the back of his head. Olympia (Video installation) 2003 2003 Royal College of Art, London 2004/5 British Council, tour of India 2005 Kunstbanken, Hamar, Norway 2007 Big Screen, Cornerhouse, Manchester 2009 Victoria and Albert Museum, London
"Chakravarthi is seen as 'Olympia', a sexually ambiguous figure, dark, transfixed and oblivious to his/her white, male servant. The tension between the two characters is filled with ambiguity too, suggesting emotions of, love, hate, lust and obsession." – Cornerhouse, Manchester To the Man in my Dreams (Installation and live performance) 2006 Artangel 2006 Comptons, Soho, London (live), Bethnal Green Town Hall, London (exhibition) and Madame Jojo's, Soho, London (interviewed by Neil Bartlett) A collaborative project with members of SW5, a London advice and information service for male, female and transgender sex workers (now known as SWISH). A collection of letters between someone who calls himself 'father' and 'George'. Masking (Film) 2009 Live Art Development Agency
Short film produced to celebrate LADA's tenth anniversary. "′Masking′ is an investigation of the visual creation and identification of archetypal and racially motivated images in pornography... This short film of 'The Blonde' and 'The Black Diva' is a study of some of the reoccurring stereotypes in pornography." – LADA I Feel Love! (Durational live performance) 2009 SPILL Festival of Performance 2009 Soho Square, London An outdoor performance lasting all day that examines ways in which the body is traditionally portrayed in public sculpture, memorials and popular culture. Ode to a Dark Star (Video installation) 2009 Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 2009 Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford upon Avon Chakravarthi in costume as both Shakespeare and the 3rd Earl of Southampton in a looped video displayed in a frame, giving the impression of a painting with some motion. The Cobbe portrait of Shakespeare was shown for the first time in the same exhibition (Shakespeare Found: a Life Portrait). There is also a Cobbe portrait of Southampton. George Chakravarthi UnSeen (DVD) 2009 Live Art Development Agency A slide-show of early, photographic self-portraits by Chakravarthi. The photographs show him experimenting with his identity; they represent the earliest documentation of the experiences which inform much of his current work. The soundtrack is a conversation between Chakravarthi and Andrew Mitchelson in which Chakravarthi talks about his childhood experiences in India and London, and about feeling an outsider as far as both cultures are concerned. Negrophilia (Live performance) 2010 Duckie 2010 Duckie, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London 2014 ALAG: A Live Art Gala (celebration of 15th Anniversary of the Live Art Development Agency (LADA)), Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London 2014 Brut Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria 2015 Abrons Arts Center, New York City (part of LADA's 'Just Like A Woman: NYC Edition Programme') 2015 Chelsea Theatre, London (part of LADA's 'Just Like A Woman: London Edition Programme') 2015 The Citadel, St Helens, Merseyside (part of Duckie's 'Twenty First Century Music Hall') Negrophilia is inspired by the Parisian avant-garde culture of the 1920s and its fascination with Africanism (Negrophilia), Hollywood cinema's negative portrayals of Africa and Africans in the same era and the performer Josephine Baker. Chakravarthi reveals himself dressed, as Baker famously did, in a banana skirt and pearls. "Good art makes you see the world differently – whether it's George Chakravarthi shimmying in drag from inside a gorilla suit at ALAG, or Turner's spectacular landscapes hanging in the Tate." – Mary Paterson