Thirteen

Evoking death, drama and identity, George Chakravarthi re-imagines thirteen characters in Shakespeare’s plays who met their ends through suicide. Marking the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, this is the first time Thirteen will be shown outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where the exhibition was originally shown.?

Thirteen is a series of powerful self-portraits presented as light boxes. Delhi-born Chakravarthi is an artist who works with performance and photographic imagery to explore and challenge assumptions of gender, sexual and racial identity. In Thirteen, he assumes the roles of some of Shakespeare's doomed characters, including Mark Antony, Othello, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Cleopatra, and Romeo and Juliet. In doing so, Chakravarthi explores themes of ambiguity of gender and masking of identity, often central to Shakespeare’s plays.??