En Route

Ottavia Castellina, currently based between Turin and London is a fine art photographer who graduated from the London College of Communication. She is presently at KHOJ as part of the RESO International Exchange Residency Initiative that aims to foster cultural exchange and creative production as well as linking artists with the leading contemporary arts organizations in Piedmont (Italy), New Delhi (India), Cairo (Egypt) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

Through this residency, Ottavia wishes to focus her lens on women-only commuters’ trains/ Ladies’ Specials. She views the Ladies’ special trains as representative of an emerging class of women in Indian contemporary society, who have entered the urban work force in an otherwise tradition-bound patriarchal culture as well as a metaphor for a space where Indian women can express themselves freely, away from the roles, constrictions and violence, which persists in their society. Ottavia hopes “to embark on a personal excursion into the world of these women, through their commuting journey to work, exploring their hopes, concerns, dreams and expectations,” while reflecting on her “intimate experience of being perceived as ‘different’ and ‘other’ and on the mutual fascination, as well as on the feeling of displacement, that emerge from cultural confrontation.”

Samir Parker, based in Mumbai, has a background in design. He has worked with artists and institutions designing and producing exhibitions and site-specific installations and also teaches at the Faculty of Design, CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Samir is intrigued by the mythic spaces we create within the actual cities we inhabit and is interested in how the ever changing urban landscape is shaped by hope and desire; our fantasies of ourselves and how that awareness (or lack thereof) shapes our destiny. During this residency, he intends to engage the city through the negotiation of everyday journeys, exploring without specific purpose and slipping into a fantasy that is both graphical and textual. He hopes that what emerges are “vignettes of finely rendered dreamscapes built upon the hopes and aspirations of its denizens; shaped by ancient legends and contemporary politics and which will render an alternate reality into which the viewer is drawn and can discover stories that extend in multiple dimensions across built form.”