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"Zarina: Edges of Her World."
[[underline]]Art Asia Pacific. [[/underline]]
p.77.

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

[[image]]

writes. Actually, I think in words and then make the image. 
I am also putting myself in a framework of time. If my works last 30, 40, or 50 years, then somebody can understand exactly when they were created by the way language appears in them. "Letters from Home" is based on letters my sister wrote me in Urdu. So I'm placing myself in the specific time frame of an era when people wrote letters. Who writes letters anymore? Nobody. Email and delete. And who writes in Urdu? Only people who don't know English? If you don't have a connection with your own language, something is already lost in translation.
AAP: In 2001, you created Dividing Line, a set of prints depicting the border between India and Pakistan as an almost abstract form. What was your experience as a Muslim in India before and after Partition, and why did it take so long for you to visit that theme?
Z: In Aligarh we witnessed Partition from afar. Aligarh was not destroyed or attacked. There were threats, but nothing happened. The pain of Partition came much later. The typical story-the people who left their homes or were thrown out-didn't apply to me. LATER WE FELT BETRAYED,BECAUSE WE THOUGHT WE WERE PART OF GANDHI'S AND NEHRU'S INDIA, THAT WE WERE PART OF THI WONDERFUL SECULAR EXPERIMENT. Which we still are! But in a way, something like Ahmedabad (when 1,000 people died in communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in 2002) happens and you lose your confidence, you lose your faith. I crossed middle age, and it was something I lived with my entire life and never addressed. So the first line I did, Dividing Line, had been festering all these years. 
AAP: And now what is it like to be a Muslim artist in America in 2007?
Z: Culturally, in Aligarh, we were Muslims, but we considered ourselves Indians. The Muslim identity came much later. You can't deny it. You can't go around and say, "I'm a Muslim but I'm not like other Muslims, I'm a good Muslim." No one cares. If you are a Muslim today in the West, you feel humiliated by the way Muslims are depicted and treated. I thought I could escape whatever else is going on in the rest of the world, but it follows you. If you are Muslim you are a suspect, even without a beard. No one bothers to think about the culture. And I don't agree with Muslims who say, "We did this in the 14th century and wee did this in the 16th century." Who cares? What is important is what we are doing now. 
I was born in India and grew up there, although I learned a lot in the West. But the Western canon will never recognize me as its own-once you enter the arena of modernism you become suspect as if you are copying, and if you are from Southeast Asia or the Middle East, you should stay in your own tradition. But, really, we can be part of the modern canon because we have looked everywhere. You don't forget where you start from, but you pick things up along the way. I don't need to apologize for being a woman or a Muslim, or for living in America. There is nothing to prove. END

"Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution" continues at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through July 16 and travels to New York's PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in 2008. Zarina had solo shows this year at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, and Bodhi Art, Mumbai. 

[[note]]EDGE OF LAND FROM "JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF LAND" SERIES (1994) Portfolio of six etchings printed on Arches Cover white paper and mounted on Chine Colle with handmade Nepalese paper, 13 x 9.5 in, edition of 20 and 2 artist proofs. Courtesy Bodhi Art.