Seven Lives and a Dream

An expression of Chhacchi’s interest in what she calls "indigenous feminism," a pre-modern form of feminism originating in the Indian subcontinent, Seven Lives and a Dream represents the political and social awakening and activism in which the artist was actively involved. It is composed of eighteen black and white photographs that include both documentary images taken in the 1980s in New Delhi at women’s movement demonstrations and a series of staged portraits of feminist activists from 1990–91. The earlier images included in this group demonstrate the anguish and intense emotions felt by the activists. Chhacchi’s interrogation of her own documentary practice led her to find further ways to express and capture the complex subjectivity of her sitters, resulting here in the staged portraits made in collaboration with seven activists. Identified as Radha, Shahjahan Apa, Sathyarani, Shanti, Devikripa, Sharadaben, and Urvashi, the portraits were taken with props of the activists’ choosing in public or domestic settings. "The staged photographs gave me the opportunity to alter the balance of power somewhat…" Chhachi has recalled.[1] Indeed by the 1990s, she had begun to question the power relationships embedded in the mode of documentary photography, including her own earlier practice, which to her seemed to: "unconsciously reproduce something close to the colonial recording of ‘natives’. It became necessary to find a path to a representation of ‘citizens’, with agency and control over their own representation."[2]


[1] "Sheba Chhachhi—'Alter the Balance of Power’," Artist interview, TateShots, February 1, 2019.

[2] Sophia Powers and Sheba Chhachhi, "In Conversation with Sheba Chhachhi," in Seven Lives and a Dream, 1980–91, printed 2014, by Sheba Chhachhi, Tate Research Publications, 2021.