Indian photographer, installation artist and women’s rights activist Sheba Chhachhi has been announced as the winner of the second Prix Thun for Art and Ethics award, said a press release by Pro Helvetia. The art prize aims at promoting artists who support a sustainable world.

Sheba Chhachhi is an artist, writer and woman’s rights activist who creates large multimedia installations about ecology, gender and urban transformations in public spaces.

The prize is worth 25,000 Swiss francs. Artist George Steinmann who grew up in Thun initiated the art prize, which was first given out in 2016. This year, on the jury along with him were Jürg Neuenschwander, film director and producer, Peter Schneemann, professor at the Bern Institute for Art History; Jean Ziegler, professor and sociologist, Geneva; Helen Hirsch, Director of Kunstmuseum Thun and Marianne Flubacher, Head of the Cultural Department of the City of Thun. The jury proposed 8 artists from seven countries and chose Sheba Chhachhi to receive the prize.



Sheba Chhachhi is an artist, photographer and thinker who investigates questions of gender, eco-philosophy, violence and visual cultures, with emphasis on the recuperation of cultural memory. An activist/photographer in the women’s movement in the 1980s, Chhachhi moved on to create intimate, sensorial encounters through large multimedia installations. Her work interweaves the mythic and the social, pre-modern thought and contemporary concerns, bringing the contemplative into the political. She has exhibited widely including the Gwangju, Taipei, Moscow, Singapore and Havana biennales; her works are held in significant public and private collections. Chhachhi speaks, writes and teaches in both institutional and non -formal contexts. She lives and works in New Delhi.

The Prix Thun for Art and Ethics will be given officially on August 25, 2017 at Thun.

Source: scroll.in

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