Zarina Atlas of Her World Sep 6, 2019–Feb 2, 2020 This exhibition is presented in three galleries: the Entrance Gallery, Cube Gallery, and Lower West Gallery. Visit the Mezzanine on the second level for additional resources.
Over her more than five-decade career, the Indian-born American artist Zarina Hashmi (b. 1937) has produced an expansive body of work that explores themes of memory, place, and loss. Her works engage elements of abstraction and minimalism and reveal an attention to line and form, which is derived in part from her study of mathematics and interest in the history of art and architecture. Poetry, calligraphy, and Urdu— her mother tongue—have also shaped the artist’s distinct and lyrical approach to art-making. Zarina’s inventive techniques and versatile practice also reflect the broad range of influences resulting from a lifetime of travel across Asia and Europe, and eventually the United States. Zarina, who prefers to be referred to by her first name only, grew up in Aligarh, a university town in northern India. Inspired in part by family visits to nearby monuments of the Mughal era (1526– 1857) and images of Western art gleaned from library books, she became interested in art from a young age. At Aligarh Muslim University, Zarina earned a degree in mathematics and statistics, intending to become an architect. Before she could realize this goal, however, Zarina married a diplomat whose work took them to Bangkok, Thailand, where she first encountered Japanese woodblock prints. This discovery sparked a lifelong exploration of printmaking. During her husband’s subsequent assignments throughout western Europe and India, she sought out opportunities to deepen her engagement with this medium. Zarina’s formal instruction in artmaking first took place in Paris at Atelier 17, a pioneering