Important Notice

An early portfolio of seven prints by Zarina Hashmi, the present lot explores the artist’s deeply personal memories of the family house in Aligarh, India where she was born and spent her formative years. Here, “…each of the seven etched pages references a family member and a memory evoked of the simple events of day-to-day life in that house. It starts ‘At night I go to the House at Aligarh’, which is imaged with many rooms around a courtyard;... An early portfolio of seven prints by Zarina Hashmi, the present lot explores the artist’s deeply personal memories of the family house in Aligarh, India where she was born and spent her formative years. Here, “…each of the seven etched pages references a family member and a memory evoked of the simple events of day-to-day life in that house. It starts ‘At night I go to the House at Aligarh’, which is imaged with many rooms around a courtyard; then ‘Ami waits for the motia blossom’, the pods arranged in a row like a child would draw. Next comes ‘Saeeda brings her children’ and there are many as the ‘petals’ of the flower-like form suggests. Her brother was the storyteller and in ‘Aslam tells a story’ the overlapping of many strands is suggestive of a complex narrative. In ‘Rani asks me to sing a song’, one simple shape evokes the closeness of the two sisters in a private moment, and in ‘Abba comes in to look at us’ the ‘bow tie’ like form may allude to both children affectionately observed by a caring father. The final print is the only one in color (a bright orange/red) ‘At night we all come home to the House at Aligarh’. It is composed of a square surrounded by four lobes, a shape with a long tradition back to medieval art – the compositional framework often serving to contain some sacred icon – that Zarina uses in other works in various mediums. The shapes that appear in this tender evocation of home seem to grow from the pieces cast in paper and in bronze she made in the ‘80s, some of which were modeled after flower, seed and pod shapes. The structures of the natural are reduced to basic figures akin to the cast pieces of rooms or parts of houses mapped in square or rectangular shape. In the prints, text and image reinforces the sense of familial closeness; some shapes are cocoon-like protecting the young in comfort and safety before the time is ripe to emerge as an adult” (Joyce Brodsky, “The Imprint of a Transnational Life”, Zarina: Weaving Memory 1990-2006, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2007, not paginated).

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