Communication of thoughts and emotions has always been a cornerstone of human civilization. We find an obsession with spreading ideas through various mediums, whether direct or abstract.  Since the dawn of time, humans have been making cave paintings, sculptures, etc. From a handprint in a cave to the Athena Parthenos in Greece, we’ve always been making things that can store bits and pieces of us and our lives inside them. We’ve always been making art.

Art, in the hands of the right artist, is a tool capable of opening up conversations, affecting emotions, reimagining old societal structures, and even igniting revolutions. As such, it has always held an important place in the arsenal of feminists around the world. Be it Judy Chicago’s seminal piece The Dinner Party or Mary Beth Edelson’s Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, feminists have often turned to art as a means of swaying public sentiment and presenting their narrative.

Of the multiple talented Indian women who can be credited with effectively integrating art and activism, Sheba Chhachhi is perhaps one of the first names that come to mind.

Her father was an engineer in the Indian Army and it was during his 1958 posting in Ethiopia that Chhachhi was born. After relocating to India at the age of 3, she got her education from Delhi, Calcutta, and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. She has said that she spent some of her teen years hanging out with folksingers and musicians before she got involved with the feminist movement. She started her career with documentary photography in 1980 but switched over to multimedia installations by 1993 which she describes as, “the perfect form because it brought photography, text, and sculpture together.”

From raising awareness about dowry killings to the injustice and environmental damages in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, she has used her skills and her platform to amplify the voice of the marginalized and the overlooked. Many of Chhachhi’s images from the women’s movement in the 1980s and 1990s have become iconic. Her photographs of Satyarani Chadha and Shahjehan Apa, whose daughters were murdered for dowry and both of whom became active in the contemporary women’s movement from the late 1970s are one such example.

In a phone interview for Scroll.in, Chhachhi stated that “People tend to think that feminism is only about women, whereas I think it’s a political philosophy which looks at relations of power in multiple contexts”. When inquired further about her opinion on people who distance themselves from feminism and see no need for it, Chhachhi described it as ‘consumer feminism’, “where the fantasy of the liberated woman is used as a marketing tool and a lot of young women are growing up with these images. The ‘freedom’ offered is very much linked to sexuality and consumption, and the buying of consumer goods, which does not in itself change social conditions.” A lot of her work shows her mistrust of capitalism, both in the way that it affects humans and their self-worth as well as in how it is detrimental to the environment.

In one of her works, women resembling those in Mughal miniature paintings are shown bathing in a river, but the river is chock full of debris and trash.

She views ecology and feminism as deeply intertwined issues, stating that for her feminism is a political philosophy, one that refuses to differentiate between the personal and the political. Apart from this intangible issue, there are significant tangible connections between the two issues as well, such as how a water shortage would affect the poorer and more marginalized first, a significant portion of whom are women.

Chhachhi is constantly aware of how her art is impacting public consciousness and sentiments. This could be seen when she was using the pictures she took as a documentary photographer and activist in the 80’s to challenge conventional stereotypes about women. However, soon she realized that the image of the militant, struggling woman had become a stereotype in itself. Becoming aware of how she was still following the pre-colonial method of documentary photography and was showing these women as ‘Natives’ who could be perceived as harboring irrational anger instead of ‘Citizens’ who held actual concern for the nation, she decided to rectify this. Chhachhi invited 7 women activists in 1990 for staged photographs that she felt could tell a better story about the life and motivations of these women. The women chose materials and objects that they felt would describe them best. The project shows Chhachhi’s dedication to her creed as the whole project took months of work. Where another photographer would have taken their pictures right away, she spent months understanding her subjects and was determined to capture their humanity in a multi-dimensional manner. Her group of 19 photographs, titled, ‘Seven Lives and A Dream’ includes the documentary photos of the same activists along with their staged pictures.

The subversion of the established norm seems to be a running theme in her career. When she moved to photo-based installations in 1993, she found herself troubled by the commodified consumption of photographs both in media and the art space. She wished to reinvent the viewing of photographs and placing them in installations provided her the opportunity to alter this habitual encounter.

A great example of this is one of my favorite pieces by her, the ‘Water Diviner. It puts an elephant floating in the water in the place of the protagonist. The piece evokes our various sentiments attached to water, from us considering it sacred, the source of life, to us feeling anxiety at its rising scarcity. Transparency and changing images are used to create an immersive surrounding. Upon the piles of books on both sides of the installment, there are small images. One shows Radha and Krishna in front of the Yamuna, but instead of a conventionally painted river, it’s an actual picture of the polluted river. In another is a description of an undisturbed forest. It is interrupted by a news report of about 40 men beating up women in a bar, in an effort to safeguard Indian tradition and culture. The premise is simple, and so is the meaning. It serves the purpose behind art excellently, it says what the artist wanted to say and does it in a manner that makes it hard to forget.

Sheba Chhachhi acts as an inspiration not only for another artist, but also for anyone striving and struggling to make change. She acts as an inspiration to the women who are afraid to speak up, fearing that their voices shall be ignored. She shows that your talents do not have to be limited to yourself, they can be shared and make positive change in the lives of others, and perhaps in that, she tells us the true purpose of art.