Chinnamasta

An evening of poetry, story-telling and new media art, Chinnamasta is a platform imagined by me and made a reality in collaboration with a group of very talented individuals. It is a space for queer and BIPOC creative expression. The first instalment was held on 12th September 2023 and we are currently working on bringing it back in March.

Flyer Design

Chinnamasta is the tantric goddess of contradictions, and the reason I decided to call this evening Chinnamasta was to invoke her spirit amongst us, and to bring us face to face with our own contradictions. The brief that the performers were given for this evening was to tell us stories about moments or feelings of contradiction in their own lived experiences.

The flyer design is an abstraction of the mythological imagery of the goddess chinnamasta and its likeness to a fountainhead of creation, healing and way-finding in a world full of contradictions.

The goddess Chinnamasta is depicted as a woman with red skin, with her head severed and held in her hand, as three spouts of blood come out of the stub of her neck. One spout falls on her own severed head that she holds in one hand and the other two spouts fall in the mouths of her devotees that stand on her sides. Chinnamasta is shown in an aggressive stance, ready to take action, and she stands on Kama and Rati (the god of desire and the goddess of fertility) who are locked in an imbrace, making love on a lotus.

Concept sketches and processes

Stage Design – The Clock of Happenings
The stage for Chinnamasta was designed and constructed in collaboration with Berlin based visual artist Rahul Sharma, who uses new media art to explore the interplay of tangible and intangible domains. His artistic practice combined with the creative direction initiated with the flyer design, we created what we lovingly like to call the Clock of Happenings. An other-worldly space where the narrator is the central subject and a part of the clock, making the viewer very aware of the passage of time, as the intangible becomes tangible through the timbre of the performer’s voice and glacial movement of the visual projections in the backdrop.

The show was everything we hoped for, and more. The audience found a space for comfort, healing, meditation and wonderous rest.

Credits

Concept - Nippun Bhalla, NaN
Art Direction - Nippun Bhalla, Rahul Sharma, NaN
Production - Nippun Bhalla, NAN, Rahul Sharma
Venue - 90mil
Audio Engineer - NaN
DJ - NaN
Live Music - Marius Max
Visual artist - Rahul Sharma
Host - Nippun Bhalla

Performers-
Sailesh Naidu
Day Eve
Mona + Oscar
Nomonde
Nippun Bhalla

©Nippun Bhalla

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