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"Zarina: Edges of Her World."
Art Asia Pacific. p.76.

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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Aligarh, but the language, the place and my separation from it are important.

If you leave India very early in life or you're born outside, it's different, but I left as an adult. Twenty-one years are quite substantial, by that time you have formed ideas about life, about culture, but we don't trust that experience because we are too young. It took another 40 years for me to come back to it.

AAP: You use a lot of Urdu, the language spoken in much of Pakistan and Muslim communities in India, in your work, especially in the "Letters from Home" (1991) series. How does that factor in your art?

Z: My childhood was very language-bound because everything revolved around Urdu culture, poetry and literature. Poetry and the word can sometimes be more significant than images, and we were very conscious of how we spoke and expressed ourselves. I think it was Nabokov, one of my favorite writers, who said he thinks in images when he

HOLY LAND FROM "COUNTRIES" SERIES (2003) Portfolio of five woodblock prints and Urdu text on Okawara paper and mounted on Somerset paper, 16 x 14 in, edition of 20.