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When the Gun is raised the Dialogue Stops (Installation View)

Sheba Chhachhi2002

Chennai Photo Biennale

Chennai Photo Biennale
Chennai, India

Sheba Chhachhi & Sonia Jabbar's showcase at Senate House during Chennai Photo Biennale 2019. Intervening in media representations of armed conflict, dominated by groups of men with guns, this installation invites the viewer to enter the private spaces of war, to hear voices normally drowned out by the clamour of contesting stereotypes— the voices of ordinary women of Kashmir.
Humble materials— earth, bricks and rice evoke the domestic, within a configuration that draws on the contemplative formalism of the Mughal gardens in Kashmir. Somewhat subversively, rusted iron ‘books’ are placed within a series of rihals, book holders, traditionally used for the holy books of Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Each book is placed on a low platform, eliciting intimate contact with a B&W photograph and a testimony.
These testimonies, gathered over a period of six years, 1995 onwards, break out of the homogenizing, highly polarized representation of ‘Muslims’ versus ‘Hindus’, ‘Indians’ versus ‘Pakistanis’, ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Women from a wide range of communities and subject positions bear witness. Brought together despite different religions, ethnicities and experiences of the Kashmir conflict by an unambiguous rejection of violence, these are voices of strength, reason, and compassion.

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  • Title: When the Gun is raised the Dialogue Stops (Installation View)
  • Creator: Sheba Chhachhi & Sonia Jabbar
  • Date Created: 2002
  • Location: Senate House, Chennai
  • Type: Photograph
  • Original Source: Artist Website
  • External Link: See more at Chennai Photo Biennale's website
  • Exhibition title: Labyrinths
  • Exhibition Description: And the world is a complicated irregular network of images and texts in passages and paths.
  • CPB Edition: 2019
  • Artist's biography: Sheba Chhachhi’s lens-based works investigate contemporary questions about gender, the body, the city, cultural memory and eco-philosophy. An activist/photographer in the women’s movement in the 1980s, Chhachhi moved on to create intimate, sensorial encounters through large multimedia installations. Chhachhi speaks, writes and teaches in both institutional and non -formal contexts. She lives and works in New Delhi. Sonia Jabbar is a writer, photographer, filmmaker and activist who has been associated with a number of people’s movements since 1990. Jabbar has worked in Kashmir since 1995, publishing articles and essays in major national dailies and numerous anthologies.She has been working on a non-fiction book on Kashmir, and currently lives and works on a tea estate in north Bengal.
Chennai Photo Biennale

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