ZARINA | HOMES I MADE

Gifted from the artist to John L. Moore

Zarina not only mastered the art of print-making but also explored her ideas in the three-dimensional sphere. She cast works in paper, metal, wood and terra-cotta. The present lot is a sculpture cast in aluminum and painted in a dark color. It concerns itself with the concept of ‘home’ “whether personal, geographical, national, spiritual, or familial” a theme that resonates throughout her artistic oeuvre. (Where are They Now? Works by Zarina Hashmi, https://hammer.ucla.edu/blog/2018/07/where-are-they-now-works-by-zarina-hashmi) As she states, “I make a home wherever I am. My home is my hiding place, a house with four walls, sometimes with four wheels.” (Tasnim, Zarina Hashmi: Mapping Home, Muslim Media Watch,https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mmw/2012/01/zarina-hashmi-mapping-home/)

The aluminum is not shiny or glossy but dark, the structure is a simple geometrical form – a cube with a triangular roof and circular wheels. It has the appearance of a woodblock structure created by a child while at play. Could it be an old childhood toy that was once lost and found so many years later, conjuring up memories of childhood? The wheels are suggestive of the peripatetic life Zarina has led and more generally the life of a migrant, someone who has been on the move. (Z. Jumabhoy, The Art of Zarina, ArtForum online, https://www.artforum.com/print/201907/zehra-jumabhoy-on-the-art-of-zarina-80522)

While simple in appearance, the sculpture raises several complex questions – Is the house inhabited? Whose house is it? Is it Zarina’s house or does it belong to one of the families making that difficult journey across the then newly formed Radcliffe Line at the time of Partition?