Important Notice

Zarina Hashmi, who preferred to be known as simply ‘Zarina’, was barely ten years old when she witnessed the horrors of the Partition of India. Accordingly, she developed an early interest in the politics of home, space and migration - themes she would later explore in great detail in her decades-long artistic career.

Raised in Aligarh, India, Zarina travelled extensively through Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and her... Zarina Hashmi, who preferred to be known as simply ‘Zarina’, was barely ten years old when she witnessed the horrors of the Partition of India. Accordingly, she developed an early interest in the politics of home, space and migration - themes she would later explore in great detail in her decades-long artistic career.

Raised in Aligarh, India, Zarina travelled extensively through Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and her works reflect this migratory lifestyle and the multiple meanings of home she derived in the many cities and towns she lived in. Her body of work challenges familiar locations like ‘country’, the ways in which they are bordered, delimited and traversed, and the feelings and memories that they evoke in us. Her minimalist prints use these locations to construct new geographies, imbuing them with fresh perspectives and new, universal meanings.

As seen in Debris of Destruction, a unique work which mimics the battered surface of a wall, her prints are steeped in nostalgia, and invoke a sense of pain and loss. Her medium of choice - paper - contributes significantly to achieving this effect. “I have lived with books all my life. I looked at images in books before I could read. I became aware of the quality of paper used in books, its fragility and resilience, having lasted through the centuries, and its portability. Paper was a natural choice. I love organic materials that come from the earth and go back to the earth. I have worked with paper for over 50 years, I have seen it change colour, age, and wrinkle just like skin.” (Artist quoted in “The Unsettled Artist,” The Hindu, 9 February 2013, online)

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