Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh

Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh was made across several days and nights, over innumerable meals of biryani, warm embraces and tender exchanges. In the first week of January the artist joined the Shaheen Bagh movement as a protestor. As friendships were struck, and chai and biscuits shared, she began to make images.

This growing intimacy soon took on a tactile form of exchange. For every portrait she made, she created an identical Polaroid or “jadoo ka kaagaz” as they were playfully renamed, to give the women and children who were photographed, to evoke the camaraderie and kinship that formed the essence of Shaheen Bagh. Also included in the book are drawings made at the on-site crèche by the children who were waiting patiently while their mothers participated in the revolution.

For the women of Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, the women of the Dandi March and the Chipko Movement, for those at the frontlines of India’s non-violent protests, this book is an act of remembrance, to preserve the powerful legacy of women at the forefront of historic revolutions.