Zarina Hashmi (American-Indian, 1937-2020) A thousand knots (c.1980s)

Zarina Hashmi (American-Indian, 1937-2020)
A thousand knots (c.1980s)
signed 'Zarina' lower right and edition 2/10 lower left
cast paper pulp/mixed media, framed
61.6 x 61.6cm (24 1/4 x 24 1/4in).
Provenance
Property from a private collection, New York.
Gifted to the vendor by a Prominent Collector;
Acquired from the artist.

"Paper is an organic material, almost like human skin," the artist Zarina Hashmi has said. "You can scratch it, you can mold it. It even ages." Zarina in Reveling in the Multicultural Possibilities of Paper by Karen Rosenberg, 31st January 2013, The New York Times

"Watching paper being made and seeing the liquid paper pulp gave me all sorts of new ideas: What if I pour this pulp into my plate? Will my plate act like a mold? Will the paper dry in that shape? Can I cast paper? The papermakers said it couldn't be done, but I kept thinking about it."
Zarina, Zarina with Sarah Burney, Directions to my house, Asian/Pacific, American Institute, New York University, 2018, p.63

Born in the university town of Aligarh, India in 1937, Zarina Rashid was the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls and grew up in a traditional Muslim home. She was closest to her elder sister, Rani and enjoyed sleeping outdoors 'under the stars and plotting our journeys in life' in the scorching summer heat of her childhood home, whose walls enclosed a fragrant garden. (Holland Cotter, Zarina Hashmi, Artist of a World in Search of Home, Dies at 82, New York Times, 5th May 2020).

This all changed in 1947, when aged 10 she witnessed the Partition of India. Her idyllic life ended abruptly. She saw mass atrocities being committed by both Hindu's and Muslims and the memories of the ensuing violence, fear of separation, migration, and longing for home, would haunt her and mould her life and career. During this turbulent time, her father sent the family to Karachi, in the newly formed Pakistan for their safety. She would however later return to India to obtain her degree in mathematics and statistics at the university of Aligarh, although the place would never be home again.

Shortly after graduating, aged 21, she married Saad Hashmi, a foreign service diplomat, which commenced a new chapter in her life. The nature of Saad's career meant frequent travel, and over the ensuing years she would end up living in over 25 countries across the continents of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and finally the United States where she would reside permanently from 1975 onwards.

Zarina also studied in London, England when she enrolled at St. Martin's School of Art in London, England. This was a turning point in her career as it cemented her desire to become a fully-fledged artist. She returned to India, and in the ensuing half decade participated in group and solo exhibitions. Her works were showcased at the likes of Gallery Chanakya, Delhi, Kunka Chemould and Pundole Art Gallery in Bombay. It was during this time, that she went to Bonn, Germany where along with studying silk-screening, she was captivated by the prints of Dürer.

In Tokyo, her two-week stint turned into a year long stay as she immersed herself in studying the woodblock techniques with Toshi Yoshida. It was here that she began to experiment with printmaking styles and abandoned colour. She printed the grain textures found on scraps of wood that she collected on the roadside, having cleaned, oiled, and inked them herself. She identified with the resilience of the damaged organic material and wanted to capture its inherent beauty. She also either slashed and punctured the surface of handmade paper or built it up sculpturally with pulp.

She relocated to the United States in 1975, having arrived in Los Angeles, before moving to New York in 1976, where she would reside for the remainder of her life. Here, she broadened her horizons further by teaching papermaking at the Feminist Art Institute, and being part of the of Heresies Collective, a feminist publication on art and politics. She was part of their issue on Third World artists and it was the first time she encountered works by other discriminated minorities including the Afro-Americans, the native Americans and the Hispanics. This experience fundamentally altered her perception of her own experiences and made her realise how her plight was universal. Questions pertaining to notions of 'home,' 'geographical boundaries' and 'nation' would now be examined in her prints, and the amalgamation of her learnings would come to the fore. She would simplify these complex experiences in the precise and uncluttered works that she would produce, which would be the culmination of all her experiences; the influence of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Yves Klein and Jean Arp, her own background of mathematics, and adherence to Islamic notions of geometry.

The two works on offer in this auction are exquisite examples from her oeuvre and illustrate Zarina's lifelong adherence to the creation of 'multiples.' The multiplicity of prints appealed to her sensibilities, as they were the mainstays of printmaking, but also allowed for a plurality of ownership. Having grown up being surrounded by books, multiples of the original, meant that she could have access to something that might hitherto have been inaccessible. She therefore applied the aesthetic and mechanics of printmaking onto other mediums that had previously been the preserve of a singular work.

In 'A thousand knots,' (lot 8) Zarina's sculptural work we see the continuation and extension of her works on paper. It retains the expertise she had been cultivating in propagating a geometric purity and lyrical form. What makes it unique is that it is injected with colour which is reminiscent of the red sandstone of the Buland Darwaza and Jodha Bai Mahalat Fatehpur Sikri. Having lived in 25 cities and inculcated numerous experiences and cultures, she was simultaneously at home and not at home. She was likely aware of the inscriptions that surmount the doorway of the Buland Darwaza, one of which reads, 'Isa, Son of Mariam said: The world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no houses on it.'

Known for being deeply interested in Sufism, the title of the work might allude to a line in the Sufi poem, Tum Ek Gorakh Dhanda Ho by Naz Khialvi, rendered beautifully by Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a world-renowned singer of qawwalis, a form of devotional Sufi music. The line in the poem mentions that one is looking to untangle the cord but fails to find top. The title might therefore be self-referential, as Zarina was constantly 'searching' for home. Structurally, much like her white works on paper from the 60s and 70s, this work is about shadows. As you approach the work, you'll see thousands of tiny holes which pierce the pulp, and the work keeps changing based on which angle you approach it from. It's a sculpture made of shadow, caught in the interstices of each fine hole. It recalls the notion of home and is perhaps best explained by Zarina in her own words:

'I often wonder what my life would have been like had I never left my house of four walls in India [...] I do not feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go. In dreams and on sleepless nights, the fragrance of the garden, image of the sky, and sound of language returns. I go back to the roads I have crossed many times. They are my companions and my solace.' (Zarina Hashmi, Cities I called home, 2010.)