Zarina

The recorded working language is English. Work by Zarina is recorded in the collections of Tate, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum. Distinctions recorded are New York Foundation for the Arts.

• Name — Zarina • Birth Name — Zarina Rashid • Born — 16 July 1937 • Birthplace — Aligarh, United Provinces, British India • Died — 25 April 2020 • Place of death — London, England • Training — Atelier 17 • Website — zarina.work

Zarina Rashid was born on 16 July 1937 in Aligarh, India, to Sheikh Abdur Rashid, faculty at Aligarh Muslim University, and Fahmida Begum, a homemaker. Zarina earned a degree in mathematics, BS (Honors) from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1958. She then studied a variety of printmaking methods in Thailand, and at Atelier 17 studio in Paris, apprenticing to Stanley William Hayter, and with printmaker Tōshi Yoshida in Tokyo, Japan. She lived and worked in New York City. During the 1980s, Zarina served as a board member of the New York Feminist Art Institute and an instructor of papermaking workshops at the affiliated Women's Center for Learning. While on the editorial board of the feminist art journal Heresies, she contributed to the "Third World Women" issue. Zarina died in London from complications of Alzheimer's disease on 25 April 2020. On 16 July 2023, a Google Doodle inspired by Zarina's works was published to commemorate what would have been her 86th birthday.

Zarina's art was informed by her identity as a Muslim-born Indian woman, as well as a lifetime spent traveling from place to place. She used visual elements from Islamic religious decoration, especially the regular geometry commonly found in Islamic architecture. The abstract and spare geometric style of her early works has been compared to that of minimalists such as Sol LeWitt. Zarina's work explored the concept of home as a fluid, abstract space that transcends physicality or location. Her work often featured symbols that call to mind such ideas as movement, diaspora, and exile. For example, her woodblock print Paper Like Skin depicts a thin black line meandering upward across a white background, dividing the page from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. The line possesses a cartographic quality that, in its winding and angular division of the page, suggests a border between two places, or perhaps a topographical chart of a journey that is yet unfinished. For her Delhi series, she created a woodcut print based on an engraving of the city of Shajahanabad as it stood before the siege of 1857. A major work addressing these themes is the 1999 portfolio Home Is a Foreign Place. It consists of thirty-six woodcuts with letterpress additions, each pairing a monochromatic geometric image with a single word in Urdu. Zarina selected terms connected with place and memory (including “home”, “threshold”, “distance”, and “border”) and had them written in Nastaliq script by a calligrapher in Pakistan. She then developed abstract images from the words, turning memories of her childhood house into a visual vocabulary of displacement, language, and belonging.

• Year — Name of exhibition — Name of gallery — Place • 2019–20 — Zarina, A Life in Nine Lines — Kiran Nadar Museum of Art — New Delhi, India • Zarina: Atlas of Her World — Pulitzer Arts Foundation — St. Louis, USA • 2018 — Zarina — Luhring Augustine — New York, USA • Zarina: Weaving Darkness and Silence — Gallery Espace — New Delhi, India • 2017–18 — Zarina: Dark Roads — Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University — New York, USA • 2016 — Life Lines — Gallerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger — Paris, France • 2014 — Zarina: Descending Darkness — Luhring Augustine — New York, USA • Zarina: Folding House — Gallery Espace — New Delhi, India • 2012–13 — Zarina: Paper like Skin — Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Centre — Los Angeles, USA • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — New York, USA • The Art Institute of Chicago — Chicago, USA • 2011 — Zarina Hashmi: Noor — Galerie Jaeger Bucher — Paris, France • Zarina Hashmi: Recent Works, Gallery — Gallery Espace — New Delhi, India • Zarina Hashmi: Anamnesis, 1970–1989 — The Contemporary Art Gallery — Mumbai, India • 2009 — The Ten Thousand Things — Luhring Augustine — New York, USA • 2007 — Directions to My House — Shanghai Contemporary 07 Art Fair — Shanghai, China • Zarina: Paper Houses — Gallery Espace — New Delhi, India • Weaving Memory 1990–2006 — Bodhi Art — Singapore • 2006 — Zarina: Silent Soliloquy — Bodhi Art — Singapore • 2005 — Zarina Counting, 1977-2005 — Bose Pacia — New York, USA • 2004 — Cities, Countries and Borders, Prints by Zarina — Gallery Chemould — Mumbai, India • Gallery Espace — New Delhi, India • Chawkandi Gallery — Karachi, Pakistan • Gallery Rohtas 2 — Lahore, Pakistan • 2003 — Maps, Homes and Itineraries — Gallery Lux — San Francisco, USA • 2002 — Home is a Foreign Place — Korn Gallery, Drew University — Madison, New Jersey • 2001 — Zarina, Mapping a Life, 1991–2001 — Mills College Art Museum — Oakland, USA • 2000 — Home is a Foreign Place, Admit One — Gallery Espace — New York, USA • Chawkandi Gallery — Karachi, Pakistan • 1994 — Homes I Made — Faculty Gallery — University of California, Santa Cruz • 1993 — Chawkandi Gallery — Karachi, Pakistan • 1992 — House with Four Walls — Bronx Museum of the Arts — New York, USA • 1990 — Zarina: Recent Work; Bronze, Cast Paper, Etchings — Roberta English Gallery — San Francisco, USA • 1985 — Zarina Hashmi: Paper Works — Art Heritage — New Delhi, India • Chitrakoot Gallery — Calcutta, India • Gallery Cymrosa — Bombay, India • Chawkandi Gallery — Karachi, Pakistan • 1983 — Satori Gallery — San Francisco, USA • 1981 — Zarina: Cast Paper Works — Hebert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University — Ithaca, New York, USA • Zarina: Recent Cast Paper Works — Orion Editions — New York, USA • 1977 — Gallery Alana — Oslo, Norway • 1976 — India Ink Gallery — Los Angeles, USA • 1974 — Zarina: Screenprints, Tapestries — Triveni Kala Sangam — New Delhi, India • Serigraphs by Zarina — India Ink Gallery — Los Angeles, USA • 1973 — Zarina: Woodprints — India Ink Gallery — Los Angeles, USA • 1972 — Chanakya Gallery — New Delhi, India • Gallery F-15, Jeløya — Moss, Norway • 1971 — Chanakya Gallery — New Delhi, India • Cultural Centre Ora — Athens, Greece • 1970 — Graphics by Zarina — Pundole Art Gallery — Bombay, India • 1969 — Gallery Chanakya — New Delhi, India • 1968 — Kunika-Chemould Art Centre — New Delhi, India

Zarina was one of four artists/artist-groups to represent India in its first entry at the Venice Biennale in 2011. The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles organized the first retrospective of her work in 2012. Entitled Zarina: Paper Like Skin, the exhibition traveled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented Workshop and Legacy: Stanley William Hayter, Krishna Reddy, Zarina Hashmi that examined their professional collaboration. During the 2017–18 academic year, Zarina was the Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. The residency culminated in a solo exhibition, Zarina: Dark Roads (6 October 2017 – 2 February 2018) and a publication, Directions to My House. Examples of her work are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Menil Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Zarina is recorded with the occupation graphic artist. Recorded with the occupation draftsperson. Recorded with the occupation printmaker. Recorded with the occupation sculptor. Recorded with the occupation painter. Recorded as printmaker, sculptor, painter, graphic artist and draftsperson.