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November 2005, New York- Bose Pacia presents
Counting, a solo exhibition by printmaker and sculptor,
Zarina Hashmifrom November 10th through December 22th, 2005. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 pm and by appointment. There will be an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, November 10th from 6 to 8pm. The public is invited.
Through a retrospective that spans over three decades, Zarina creates a visual landscape that examines the perception of personal histories and geographies. Monochromatic prints, cast paper and metal sculpture assume the form of ontological maps through which the artist traces the themes of memory, nostalgia, dislocation, and family. Zarina's extensive journeys in life from her childhood in pre-Partition India, to her travels to the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, are reconstructed through a visual language that become emblematic of her own, distinct personal maps.
Using delicate geometric forms and fluid composition, Zarina reduces complex ideas to their essential and evocative elements. In Letters from Home, a series of Urdu letters from her sister are encased in the outline of a house, or a floor-plan of her childhood home. In the installation Rani's Garden, a series of bronze and cast paper sculpture become monuments to her home and family in Aligarh, as the bronze, spherical work Shrine suggests.
Cities is an elegy to nine cities (Grozny, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Beirut, Jenin, Baghdad, Kabul, Ahmedabad and New York) that have suffered violence or destruction in varying forms. In these black and white woodcuts, each skeletal area is delineated in eloquent tones to embody a relic of a forgotten past. In Atlas of My World, six maps of nations and countries are drawn in arresting black lines, to exemplify the geographic territories she has made her own; "to signal her symbolic possession of those sites, on which she superimposes her own meanings, the artist identifies each nation in Urdu script. By claiming these far-flung territories for her personal atlas, the artist emphasizes the multiplicity of contexts in which she locates herself."
Counting covers a spectrum of Zarina's artistic practice. Each medium affords a different experience, a unique archive of observations, transcribed to constitute an inspiring record of a life. Zarina's art has no temporal destination because her journey never ceases, she is always and never at home in the world.
Zarina was born in Aligarh, India. She has been awarded residencies in Art-Omi, in Omi, New York, and at the Women's Studio Workshop, in Rosendale, New York. Zarina received the NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books in 1985 and 1990. She has taught at Bennington College, Cornell University, and University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work is represented in collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The artist currently lives and works in New York.