1996

Artist: Sheba Chhachhi

Title: A Box of Shards / The Mermaids Mirror : Memories of Meena Kumari

Photo: Volte Art

The Mermaids Mirror by Sheba Chhacchi was an immersive media works. It repurposed an array of film stills from the film career of Meena Kumari, one of the most popular female lead actors of the Bollywood cinema of the 1950s and 60s, known in particular for her interpretation of tragic-romantic characters. The installation invoked Meena Kumari’s poetry and the music of the songs picturized on her in the films she worked in to create an alluring meditation on the embodiment of female desire and fantasy.

The work, originally made in 1996, was re-purposed as a video installation in 2005.

Sheba Chhachhi (born 1958, in Harar, Ethiopia) is a artist and photographer, known for her engagement with gender, memory and history. She is a pioneer of documentary witnessing of the feminist movement in Delhi and many parts of India.