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"Zarina: Edges of Her World."
Art Asia Pacific, p. 74.

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

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ARTASIAPACIFIC: You are included in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's "Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution." What does the show mean for you?

ZARINA: I was part of New York's 1970s scene-I arrived in 1975 and the show spans 1965-80. I knew many of those artists personally-Nasreen Mohamedi(SEE AAP 53), Ana Mendieta-we all worked together. I would have been disappointed if I wasn't included. It's not an Indian show, nor is it an Asian show. It represents where I have been for 30 years.

AAP: How do you assess feminism today?

Z: I come from a very traditional family where women weren't supposed to make their own lives. In Paris, I read Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex, and Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique also inspired me. So when I returned to Delhi I called myself a feminist.

When I came to New York and started teaching at the Feminist Art Institute I was surprised that women wanted to study with us because they had never had a female teacher before! The movement was valuable for my generation, but within 10 years that energy disappeared.

The mantle was there for a younger generation to take up. However, in my experience as a teacher, younger women often say, "I'm not a feminist," and I reply, "Yes, because you don't have to be one!" I'M NOT A GREAT FAN OF THE WORK THAT WAS CREATED AT THAT TIME BUT THE SPIRIT WAS RIGHT. I STILL CALL MYSELF A FEMINIST.

AAP: Although your artistic language was originally abstract, you developed a political voice later in your career. How did that come about?

Z: It needed to be said. Because of Indian Independence and partition in 1947, I grew up aware of ethnic conflict. At first, I was quite happy doing square and lines. But then those geometric shapes became walls and courtyards-architectural elements, aspects of home, a common theme in my work. The cities of my "...These Cities Blotted Into the Wilderness" (2003) series, which depicts maps of places marred and destroyed by conflict are somebody else's home, too. The first one was Grozny, capital of Chechnya. I saw a satellite map in The New York Times and the city was rubble. It looked like an abstract painting, and I started looking at maps every time a city was destroyed. Artists cannot dismiss the world we're living in because we're not separate from it.

AAP: In that sense has your work become representational?

Z: I don't consider it representational, but when I did the series "Homes I Made / A Life in Nine lines" (1997), I was playing with the idea of woman as homemaker. I have no quarrel with domesticity, I love keeping house and cooking, but I ALSO CONSIDER "HOME" AS A FOREIGN PLACE. WHEN I GO BACK TO INDIA I SAY I'M GOING HOME BUT THAT'S ALSO THE CASE WHEN I GO BACK TO NEW YORK. ULTIMATELY WHEREVER YOU GO, HOME FOLLOWS. Its important for younger women to see that you can be aware of your rights as a human being and still take pride in this.

AAP: Yet it seems that for you home is still Aligarh, where you grew up.

Z: I was born in Aligarh, and my father was a professor of medieval Indian history at Aligarh Muslim University. I lived there until I was 21. Being an artist, you're never sure what you will do. You develop a formal language, but the narrative takes place as your life unfolds. I never imagined I would address the subject of home, and never thought I would stay away from India. I have no desire to go back to

[[note]]AHMEDABAD FROM "...THESE CITIES BLOTTED INTO THE WILDERNESS" SERIES (2003) Portfolio of nine woodblock prints and Urdu text on Okawara paper and mounted on Somerset paper, 16 x 14 in. Courtesy Bodhi Art[[/note]]