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"Cities, Countries and Borders: Recent Work by Zarina Hashmi." LUHRING AUGUSTINE 531 West 34th Street New York NY 10011 tel 212 206 9100 fax 212 206 9055 www.luhringaugustine.com committed, is a city of scattered parts. The Tigris stills runs through it and is still filled with the blood and memories of its victims and histories. Kabul "I have never been to Kabul. I feel close to Afghanistan because it bordered pre-partioned India. Pathans would come down to the plains in the winter to escape the cold and sell their spices and nuts. The Pashtuns have never recognized the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. When the bombings started in 2001 names like Khandahar and Chaman brought back childhood memories of big, red, juicy Khandahari pomegranates, and delicious Chamam grapes. I never associated them with bombs, klashinkovs, and violence." The steep and hilly Khyber Pass was the closest that Zarina got to Kabul, a city which has remained a dream for her, a dream which is now broken by the warfare of the last two years. Her map shows a city without a centre; a spidery treatment of the upper part extends tentacles toward its prey below. Ahmedabad "Were it not for the Gujarat riots, I would have not added Ahmedabad.I have visited there twice. I kept thinking about what had happened there, as I carved a wood block. It seems unthinkable that the Sabarmati Ashram would reject Muslim refugees, when they came to seek sanctuary at Ghandiji's ashram in 2002; the doors were closed on them." It is an overwhelming circumstance that Zarina has responded in the only way she feels able, which is through her art. In this map Ahmedabad is drawn like a spider's web with roughly concentric circles through which the Sabarmati river flows. New York In this print Zarina has depicted the twin towers as two parallel lines that divide the highway of existence from that of non-existence. The lines stretch like two beams of light from earth to the heavens recalling Siva as Lingodbhavanmurti, in his magnificent form as Lord of the Worlds. New York has been Zarina's home since 1975. She knows its strengths and weaknesses, its riches and its destitute poverty. It is a city where the world's cultures, ethnicities, and races come together. Like the full stop, or period, in Devangari, these two lines both finish the series. It also requires that we stop and reflect. Mary-Ann Lutzer-Milford Mary-Ann Lutzer-Milford is a Professor of Art History who holds the Carver Chair in Far Eastern Studies at Mills College. She also specializes in Contemporary Indian Art.
