Amshu Chukki

In 2021, Baroda-based SPACE STUDIO announced its first Artist’s Grant with a special focus on research and production. Applications were received from artists across India through an open call. Artist Amshu Chukki, who lives and works in Bengaluru, was the grant’s first recipient. Amshu’s proposal stood out for the distinctive way in which he was seeking to push the boundaries using various mediums and ask questions through his research and practice. The works realised through the grant were exhibited at SPACE STUDIO’s Open Studio in Baroda. Some of these works constituted Amshu’s solo exhibition Different Danny and Other Stories, which are now on display at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai.

Through the series Different Danny and Other Stories, Amshu looks at the city of Bengaluru and the role of the stuntman — or a body double — for an actor, a group of rappers, and the residents of houses rented out for film or television shoots, and the ways in which these people double as urban planners who map and navigate the city. Stuntman Different Danny, the protagonist of Amshu’s film, notes how the city itself becomes a tool for imagining stunts, how its landscape acts as the ultimate inspiration. Weaving in fictional cinematic narratives against a wider background of the social and political narratives of the city, Amshu attempts to create a blueprint that re-imagines space, politics and urban planning.

As part of his research, Amshu documented several houses in the city, along with their respective floor plans, that were rented or leased for the purpose of shooting, including under-construction spaces. What once represented the urban landscape’s development or its possible futures, become mere surfaces for choreographies with bodies. Experimenting with stunt jackets, he has created installations, and has used lighting stands to mount sculptural plans. In Amshu’s works, stationary bodies are stretched into leaping, manoeuvring curves, and silhouettes of bodies are layered onto wire-frames of flyovers, pillars and buildings. In the case of houses used as spaces for a film production, those inhabiting the space as well as those using it as a film set share their thoughts on possession and freedom, control and commodification, aspirations and temporality.

The body of work is centred around the idea of human labour and its relationship to the architecture of cinema and the metropolis. Behind the cinematic images that we view onscreen lie many invisible processes — involving both people and apparatus — that converge to form combinations and contraptions for production. As Mario D’Souza writes in the text accompanying the exhibition Different Danny and Other Stories: ‘This invisibility is both violence and possibility to those its envelopes…Amshu Chukki foregrounds these skills, devices, and conditions to conjure an atmosphere that complicates labour and its relationship to the architecture of cinema and the city.’

Amshu Chukki is a Bengaluru-based artist whose work lies at the intersection of experimental video, photographic prints, painting, and installation art. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, and is a recipient of the Inlaks Shivdasani Fine Arts Award, 2014. His work explores the themes of reality and fiction through multimedia artwork in a manner that contemplates the outlandish nature of constructed landscapes and surreal spaces. Incorporating the narrative structure of filmmaking, he delves into the dystopian world of man-made sites and artefacts, questioning the very notions of nature and reality. Amshu has been part of various group exhibitions and residencies in India and abroad. His debut solo exhibition, The Tour, was held at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai in 20 17.

SPACE STUDIO is an independent, not-for-profit organisation in Baroda dedicated to supporting emerging artists. Established in 2008 by Krupa Amin, SPACE STUDIO offers studio space and resources to artists. SPACE STUDIO has supported more than 250 artists over the years through numerous artist residencies and public programmes such as exhibitions, workshops, film screenings and music concerts.