Viewing page 41 of 117

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[image]]
"Atlas of My World I" First in a series of three from Atlas of My World, 2001. Woodcuts with Urdu text

geography or beholden to the science of cartography. Instead they were occult tracings of the terrain and territory of the artist's psyche. Anyone who has read Marcel Proust knows how memory opens a world beyond the self and art. Zarina's prints speak volumes when approached from the artist's Subcontinental background that valourised privacy, politeness, economy of expression and suggestive silence. Innuendo, oblique gestures and subtle behaviour were also the passionate language of love. Direct expression was avoided and protest was couched in the mores and manners of the lovers' spat. One has to adjust to the public profile of Zarina's art with reservation. 

While a lot has been written on minimalism and other modern European and American forms of art, nothing has been recorded of how these styles have been assimilated by our artists with the respect to their traditional aesthetic and epistemological values. The formal aspects of Zarina's art make sense and acquire merit as they effortlessly profile her memories. For Eurocentric artists and writers on art, western art going native anywhere in Asia is apostasy as it not only threatens their hegemony but also their political agenda. Consequently, the work of our artists is summarily dismissed as derivative or imitative. 

According to the art critic of The Sunday Times, all great modern artists such as Gabo, Picasso and Matisse were thieves on a grand scale. They stole and claimed ownership by right of possession just as Europe acquired colonies by coercion, fraud and violence. It is to Zarina's credit that she appropriates, openly and honestly, a form with which she is comfortable. And despite the faasla or distance between form and content, is able to bring them close. 

Zarina's new woodcuts ought to be enjoyed for their own sake. 

2