Zarina Hashmi

Acquired directly from the artist

Good overall condition. Natural paper casting variations inherent to work. With graphite-colored iridescence, not visible in catalogue illustration.
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“Zarina Hashmi was born in Aligarh, India, in 1937 and has lived and worked in New York for the past 30 years. Her main medium is paper, which she employs in woodcuts, etchings, drawings, rubbings, and casts made from paper pulp. Although she is primarily a printmaker, she considers herself to be a sculptor as well, in part because the activity of carving blocks of wood is central to her practice. Zarina’s vocabulary is minimal yet rich in associations. Her abstract compositions are inextricably linked to her life and to the themes of dispossession and exile that have marked it. Even though her family is Muslim, they chose to stay in India following the partition of 1947, which caused the uprooting and deaths of millions of people. Eventually conditions in India made it impossible for them to stay there, but by the time her parents chose to immigrate to Pakistan in 1959, Zarina was married and living in Thailand. She was unable to return to her childhood home and was also not “at home” in Pakistan. She later lived in Germany, France, and Japan before settling in the United States. The concept of home—whether personal, geographical, national, spiritual, or familial—resonates throughout Zarina’s work. The line that defines her spaces is never anonymous; on the contrary, it is handcrafted and calligraphic. Although it appears in different guises throughout her oeuvre, her distinctive line is the unifying element of her compositions, like an umbilical cord that ties her to this world regardless of where she is.” (http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/zarina-paper-skin)

Zarina’s works are represented in numerous public and private collections. She is currently enjoying a landmark retrospective titled, Zarina: Paper Like Skin, featuring approximately 60 works which has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The next leg of the exhibition will open at The Art Institute of Chicago in June 2013.