Viewing page 45 of 117
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
"Cities, Countries and Borders: Recent Work by Zarina Hashmi." Luhring Augustine 532 West 24th Street New York NY 10011 tel 212 206 9100 fax 212 9055 and white lines, lines that are roads that led to destruction define the violence that the people of Sarajevo endured. Srebrenica Zarina could not find a map of Srebrenica (also called Serbenitza). Eight thousand people died in this so-called "safe haven", as declared by the Untied Nations. She spent hours searching websites on Bosnia trying to trace the tiny hamlet of Srebrenica. She contacted the Human Rights Watch; she searched the records of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and the New York Public Library. Finally a friend put her in touch with a United Nations worker in Sarajevo, who faxed her a map of the UN's designated "safe haven", which is the reason that so many people took refuge there. "I thought it was inappropriate to use the demarcation of a "safe haven", so I made it abstractly, not a specific town or city, I called it 'Unsafe Haven' and filled it with rows of coffins." A small irregular shape defined by a broken contour is filled with seven rows of rectangular shapes. They are coffins that lie together with the seeming discipline of a military cemetery. Beirut "I have been to Beirut three times, between Europe and India, it's the best of Easy and the West. On my second visit we drover over Sufi Mountain to Syria to visit Damascus. We stopped under the Cedar trees and had a picnic of wine and wonderful Lebanese food. The last time I was in Beirut was in 1975. During that visit I had went to Baghdad. I couldn't return to Beirut because the civil war had started; the airport was closed and I had to go back to Paris via Kuwait and then on to New York." In the print of Beirut, Zarina has produced a map that seems to show the city dissolving. In the upper part the city is dissected by slashing lines that define dark block which fade into white cross-hatches, as if it is literally draining away. Jenin "I haven't drawn a map, it is the border of the refugee camp filled with rubble. The story which really touched me was of the Israeli forces that retaliated after attacks in Israel by going to the Jenin refugee camp to find the suspected bomb-maker, who was a Palestinian confined to a wheel chair having lost his legs in a previous accident. A twelve year old boy, who was used as a decoy, who was sent up to the suspected bomber's house. When the door opened the man was shot and the house was bulldozed with occupants still inside." For Zarina bulldozers have become symbols of destruction. A wide, black line defines the contours of Jenin, creating an angular asymmetric diagram. It resembles a piece of shrapnel that is vaguely suggestive of a bomb. Baghdad In Baghdad, once a beautiful city, following in the Muslim tradition of ziyarat, in which one visits places of religious and spiritual significance, Zarina visted the tombs of Sufi Saints in Delhi, Ajmer and Fatehpur Sikri, with her mother. For her going on Ziarat is a natural thing to do. Two historical events inspired her of Baghdad. The first was her visit to Kerbala, where she was reminded of the massacre of Hussain, the Prophet Mohamed's grandson, and his family in 680 AD. The second terrible event occurred in 1258 AD when Mongol armies destroyed the city. It was during this time that the great library was burned. According to the myth, so many books were thrown into the Tigris River that the water turned black from the ink, as the history of Baghdad was washed away. Before Zarina started to make maps of cities she discovered the book, The City Shaped, by Spiro Kostof. He describes the round city of Baghdad founded by Caliph Al-Mansur (745-775 AD) that was subject to annual flooding. No trace of this earlier city remains, except in memory. Today, Baghdad, the beleaguered capital of Iraq, where every conceivable atrocity has been
