Viewing page 65 of 117

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

"Zarina: Edges of Her World."
Art Asia Pacific. p. 73.

LUHRING
AUGUSTINE

531 West 24th Street
New York NY 10011
tel 212 206 9100 fax 212 206 9055
www.luhringaugustine.com

ZARINA

EDGES OF HER WORLD
by Samir S. Patel

Known for her stark, rough-hewn woodcut prints, Zarina Hashmi was the quintessential peripatetic artist long before it became vogue. Born in India in 1937, she grew up in Aligarh in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and left for what she calls "20 years on the road" before moving to New York in 1975. Her husband, an Indian foreign service officer, followed an itinerary that included stops in Bangkok and Paris, and Zarina also spent time on a Japan Foundation Fellowship in Tokyo studying with master printmaker Toshi Yoshida in 1974. Once she settled in New York, Zarina established herself as an active contributor to the articulation of feminist art, teaching for 10 years at the New York Feminist Art Institute and collaborating with the artist-run non-profit A.I.R. Gallery and the Heresies political art journal.

In the 1960s, she explored abstraction in her work, but the shapes she depicted seemed so fraught with meaning that she began to explicitly engage personal memories, including her childhood home. Eventually she branched out to the wider world as well, touching upon conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia and the Middle East, as well as those between India and Pakistan.

ArtAsiaPacific caught up with Zarina at the New York loft that has been her home and studio for 30 years.