Visit a new world through Live Art by Sapna Chandu: ‘Kwality Chai’

Kwality Chai‘ is an interactive and immersive Live Art performance from Melbourne-based artist Sapna Chandu that premieres this September at the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

‘Kwality Chai’ installs a unique golden chai cart at Melbourne’s iconic Flinders street station.

In an alternate reality where India has taken over Australia, this dynamic public performance presents an animated ‘chai-wallah (specialist Indian tea maker) who theatrically  “pulls” spicy tea for commuters and passers by. From here, the alternate reality unfolds as the audience interact with a team of talented performers (playing waiters who speak in an invented Indian-Australian language), an immersive soundscape, a specially published newspaper (Kwality Times), and a  “New World” radio station playing news, stories and beats.

This provocative new work presents an uncanny intervention into the every-day, drawing in an unsuspecting public as audience to experience Australia’s cross cultural identity, with the offer of tantilising Indian Chai.

Australian-Indian artist Sapna Chandu works with site-specific installations and has a special interest in cross-cultural stories.

Chandu hopes to stimulate the audience’s imagination and senses beyond fears of an enemy invasion, to value the “unique and playful exploration of the legacy of cultural imperialism in a distinctly Australian context. She intends to offer a space for contemplation and participation in a setting where the human spirit embraces change in creative and enterprising ways.

“I grew up in Melbourne in a small Indian community and am interested in the effect of mass migration on collective culture – how this creates a new language of communication and social exchange” – Sapna Chandu

 

Flinders Street Station, opposite Degraves Street
19 September to 5 October, 2014
Melbourne

Michael Warnock, Kwality Chai da!, 2014, pigment print

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