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Hindustan Times
Jan. 20, 1986

Krishna Chaitanya

PAPER is a surface for visual art in tradition. But modern explorations have tried to use it as material for plastic or sculptural art. Likewise, thread which is a familiar artistic medium in traditional embroidery and macrame, can be used for painterly creations. The Japanese have explored along these lines far more than others. Zarina Hashima went to Japan for training in these fields after studying graphics with Hayter in Paris and in West Germany and her current exhibition at Art Heritage presents some imaginative creations.
The creations in cast paper are technically interesting but the designs that make them look like sections of walls with arrangements of tiles in relief forming checkerboard patterns are not perhaps too exciting. But they become fascinating when shaped into unframed free shapes, in the form of a Greek cross or a star, with ridged and fluted services and serrated edges. More piquantly, a light relief is sometimes obtained by blind embossing and etching, a grey tone occasionally being provided by rubbing. Paper reverts to 

Art of paper & thread

the traditional role of being two-dimensional surface in some pieces, though the visual design is created by the cluster and scatter of numerous small punctures made by pins.
The use of string on paper does not create much novelty when the former is used only for checkerboard patterns on the surface. But, in one piece, string is use with blind embossing and etching to create a piquantly illusionistic visual buttons arranged on a flat surface with threads passing through their holes. In another, the strings trace decorative arabesques around an untouched oval area and there is a reticent yet real suggestion of a mirror with an ornamental, rococo frame. But finer perhaps are the creations where a few lengths of thread pierced through the paper from behind trade subtle abstract patterns on the surface. The threads here suggest Klee's lines going on an adventure.
Trailing clouds of glory they come: Wordsworth said that about children,