Viewing page 3 of 7

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

MY NOTES/ DISCUSSIONS WITH ZARINA ON THE SERIES 

Since I left home in my early twenties, my sister's letters have been my connection to my family, culture, and to the language I grew up in. The House at Aligarh was my first portfolio of prints in 1990. When I started this series of works based on personal memories I revisited homes I had made, places I had visited and borders I had crossed. Also I came to reflect on the idea of home as a foreign place, and to see that we can only create homes in words and images. 

[[description below]] Zarina Hashmi writing the introduction to her works, Letters from Home in the catalog Zarina Counting 1977-2005, Bose Pacia Gallery, NY, 2005.

RECLAIMING THE HOUSE/HOME

Zarina came to live in New York on 15 May 1975; and she lives till in the same studio apartment, which is rented.

Over thirty years I have  here in New York.
I have never owned a house...

I am happiest in my own home - I would have enjoyed building my own home - I think homes are important, the way you feel about the..

(ON PHOTOGRAPH) I was born in this house in Aligarh: it belongs to the University of Aligarh where my father was a professor of medieval history. He was also provost of the University. 

We lived in the house in Aligarh as a family unit till 1959: my elder sister Saeeda and my brother Aslam - they were both elder and left earlier. My sister Rami and I stayed on with our parents. I married in 1958. A year later they all left for Pakistan. I had no family left in India...

In 1959 my father decided to go back to Pakistan. I was deeply attached to my father. This was my first sense of loss - when they left for Pakistan. 

"It may be that writers in my position, exiles or immigrants, or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt"
        -- Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, Granta Books, 1992, p. 10