Anita Khemka & Imran Kokiloo (India)
The Making of a Family Album
(Summer 2022)
Exhibition at Casa della Fotografia, Gordola
Project in collaboration with Pro Helvetia New Delhi
La realizzazione di un album di famiglia
“Ogni fotografia è un memento mori. Fare una fotografia significa partecipare della mortalità, della vulnerabilità e della mutabilità di un’altra persona (o di un’altra cosa). Ed è proprio isolando un determinato momento e congelandolo che tutte le fotografie attestano l’inesorabile azione dissolvente del tempo” — Susan Sontag.
In che modo un paesaggio entra a far parte del nostro essere? La separazione della storia violenta e tormentata dai paesaggi magnanimi del Kashmir può convincere i suoi abitanti a credere nei luoghi comuni che invitano alla pace? O continueranno all’infinito con questa dolorosa frammentazione? Imran lo fa sicuramente, ma in sordina. Finché non si riversano nelle nostre ricostruzioni di immagini familiari. Le foto di famiglia di questa serie ci ricordano simbolicamente l’inevitabilità del passato, la perdita e la morte. Queste immagini costruite sono piene di ricordi che non possono essere toccati né modificati, ma solo rivissuti all’infinito nella nostra immaginazione. Gli album di famiglia di un’infanzia felice in Kashmir, ora abilmente inseriti in queste costruzioni nei nuovi paesaggi – sono forse tentativi falliti di comprendere e fare pace con le cose perdute? Una stratificazione del passato e del presente, che fonde i paesaggi del Kashmir con la Verzasca, che soffoca i ricordi della nostra famiglia di oggi con gli album di famiglia della bella infanzia di Imran nei paesaggi sereni (e insanguinati) del Kashmir, agiscono sia come ancore che come pesi morti. Non ci permettono di riconciliarci, né di andare avanti.
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” — Susan Sontag.
How does a landscape suffuse into one’s being? Can the separation of the violent- troubled history from Kashmir’s magnanimous landscapes convince its natives to believe in peace-invoking platitudes? Or do they carry on endlessly with this painful fragmentation? Imran certainly does, but mutedly. Until they spill into our familial image reconstructions. The family photos from this series, symbolically remind us of the inevitability of the past, loss and death. The constructed images are replete with memories that can neither be touched nor altered, only re-lived in our imaginations on an endless loop. Family albums from an erstwhile happy childhood in Kashmir, now deftly inserted into these constructions in the new landscapes – are these failed attempts to behold and make peace with the lost? A layering of the past and the present, fusing the landscapes of Kashmir with Verzasca, suffusing our family’s memories of today with family albums from Imran’s beautiful childhood in Kashmir’s serene (and bloodied) landscapes, they act as both, anchors as well as dead weights. Neither do they let us reconcile, nor move on.
Anita Khemka (b.1972) read English Literature from Delhi University and Visual Merchandizing from La Salle, Singapore before becoming a photographer in 1996. She has since closely followed the lives of socially marginalized and excluded groups. Her work dealing with alternative sexuality was made into a German film, Between the Lines – India’s Third Gender in 2005 — following three hijras (eunuchs), she entered the vibrant yet struggling hijra communities, openly discussing many intimate details of their lives.
Khemka started working in collaboration with her partner Imran Kokiloo in 2016 and the duo has since been working on Kashmir. She has exhibited her work widely and is currently engaged with The MurthyNAYAK Foundation as a researcher to work on PhotoSouthAsia, a site dedicated to South Asian Photography practices.
Imran B Kokiloo (b.1978) is a lens-based artist from India. His first body of work produced in collaboration with Anita Khemka titled Pellet Identity was exhibited at FotoFest, Houston (2018) and a print from the series is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has since continued to work on Kashmir, which he defines as his lifelong endeavour. This work was shortlisted for the Grand Prix Images Vevey, Switzerland (2019). His interest in analogue and vintage processes has led him to produce a series of large-format pinhole photographs titled Kashmir: A memory in mist.
Kokiloo’s collaborative work made during the global COVID pandemic, titled Shared Solitude was exhibited at PHOTOINK, New Delhi (2021). His installation work made in collaboration with his partner, titled Kashmir: I hope they serve beer in hell is being shown at the Landskrona Foto Festival (2022). He was nominated for the Magnum Foundation Counter Histories Grant (2022).
The artists are represented by PHOTOINK.
La residenza artistica di Anita Khemka & Imran Kokiloo
è stata possibile grazie alla collaborazione con Pro Helvetia New Delhi
