Zarina
Folding House, a grid of black and gold house forms by Zarina
Folding House, 2013Collages on handmade paper

Artist · Printmaker · Sculptor

“I just made my personal life the subject of my art.”

Zarina · Tate studio interview ↗

Portrait of Zarina

Zarina

1937 — 2020

  • Aligarh
  • Bangkok
  • New Delhi
  • Paris
  • Bonn
  • Tokyo
  • Los Angeles
  • Santa Cruz
  • New York
  • London
Enter through the work ↓

Four themes

A life held in paper and line

Four ways into a practice shaped over more than five decades.

Home is a Foreign Place, complete framed portfolio, by Zarina

Home

ghar

Floor plans, remembered rooms, and the houses carried within us.

Home is a Foreign Place1999 · Complete framed portfolio
Dividing Line, complete sheet, by Zarina

Borders

sarhad

Lines drawn, crossed, and redrawn across maps and lives.

Dividing Line2001 · Complete sheet
Letters from Home, portfolio installation, by Zarina

Memory

yaad

Letters, fragments, and the things kept because they could not be carried.

Letters from Home2004 · Portfolio installation
Urdu Proverbs, complete portfolio view, by Zarina

Language

zabaan

Urdu as a home that could survive distance and exile.

Urdu Proverbs2011 · Complete portfolio view

On view

FragilityMenil Drawing Institute · Houston

1937–2020

Paper was never only a support. It became house, boundary, letter, map, wound, and memory.

Her life →

Selected works

Across the collection

View works →
Dividing Line, a dark carved boundary crossing a pale printed field, by Zarina
Dividing Line, 2001Woodcut on handmade paper, mounted on Arches Cover white paper
Tasbih, a hanging string of dark beads flecked with gold, by Zarina
Tasbih, 2011Dark beads flecked with gold gather into a suspended line—a sculpture shaped by repetition and touch.
Portrait of Zarina as a young woman
From the archive

Life

A life across cities and borders

Born in Aligarh in 1937, Zarina made paper, line, language, and the architecture of memory into a body of work of uncommon intimacy and rigor.

“I do not feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go.”Zarina, Cities I Called Home
Read the chronology →

On view & recent

Exhibitions

All exhibitions →
On viewFragilityMenil Drawing Institute · Houston↗On viewFive Centuries of Works on Paper: The Grunwald Center at 70, Part IIHammer Museum · Los Angeles↗PastDirections to My HouseSTPI · Singapore↗PastMapping Otherwise: Between the Ocean and the SkyWallach Art Gallery, Columbia University · New York↗PastDialogues & ConversationsPulitzer Arts Foundation · St. Louis↗PastBeyond the StarsLuhring Augustine Tribeca · New York↗PastUrdu WorldsIshara Art Foundation · Dubai↗

Research

Sources for the work and life

Museum collections, archival papers, oral histories, catalogues, and gallery records.

Explore sources →
Archives of American ArtZarina Hashmi papers, 1950–2015 · 1.1 linear feet and 4.28 GB · English and Urdu · finding aid and access guidance↗The Metropolitan Museum of ArtIn Memoriam: Zarina Hashmi · Sheena Wagstaff, 28 April 2020↗The Museum of Modern ArtHome is a Foreign Place — artist audio↗Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumZarina: Paper Like Skin · New York, 25 January–21 April 2013↗