Zarina

Zarina
Hashmi, who prefers to be referred to simply as Zarina, was born in 1937 and
raised in Aligarh, India.  After
receiving a degree in mathematics, she went on to study woodblock printing in
Bangkok and Tokyo, and intaglio with S. W. Hayter at Atelier-17 in Paris.  She currently resides and works in New York.

Defined by
her adherence to the personal and the essential, Zarina took an early interest
in architecture and mathematics, as is reflected in her use of geometry and her
emphasis on structural purity. While her work tends towards minimalism, its
starkness is tempered by its texture and materiality. Her art poignantly
chronicles her life and recurring themes include home, displacement, borders,
journey and memory.

Best known
as a printmaker, Zarina prefers to carve instead of draw the line, to gouge the
surface rather than build it up. She has used various mediums of printmaking
including intaglio, woodblocks, lithography, and silkscreen, and she frequently
creates series of several prints in order to reference a multiplicity of
locales or concepts. Zarina has long been interested in the material
possibilities of paper and in addition to printing on it, she has created works
which entail puncturing, scratching, weaving and sewing on paper. Zarina also
creates sculpture using a variety of media such as bronze, aluminum, steel,
wood, tin, and paper pulp.

Zarina has
exhibited at numerous venues internationally including representing India at
the 2011 Venice Biennale, and her retrospective exhibition entitled Zarina: Paper Like Skin which was
presented at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2012, and at the Guggenheim, New
York, and the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Her work is in the permanent
collections of the Tate Modern, London; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Zarina was
in residency at Montalvo Arts Center’s Lucas Artist Residency Program in 2006,
at which time she created Shadow House I
and II.