Drawing Room: Why Narayan Chandra Biswas loves Zarina Hashmi’s art
Zarina Hashmi’s works keep questioning ideas of belonging. See how she makes a single line echo the history of two nations
The Hindi poet Dushyant says, “A true artist portrays what they have lived and suffered”. And you can see it plainly and eloquently in Zarina Hashmi’s art.
Zarina, who passed away in 2020, was born in 1937 and raised in Aligarh, in what is Uttar Pradesh today. She was only 10 when Independence turned her world upside down. Her family was Muslim, and had to relocate across the border at Partition. Though they later returned to India, Zarina grappled with the loss of her childhood home. As an adult, she moved from country to country – first with her Indian diplomat husband, later in search of a permanent home to practise her art, which she finally established in New York.
Art critics often describe her work – drawing, printmaking, and sculpture – as incorporating motifs and geometry from Islamic religious decoration. Those aren’t the terms that first come to mind when you view Dividing Line (2001), my favourite of her works. It’s a woodcut printed in black ink on handmade Indian paper and features a single, jagged black line, gouged into the surface and stretching from top to bottom. It looks like it is carved with purposeful intention instead of being simply drawn. The line is both a fracture and a scar – Zarina has recreated the Indo-Pakistan border, the line that split a unified nation into two in 1947.
That the work was created in 2001, more than 50 years after Partition, shows how both nations continue to bear the brunt of the split. It has shaped histories, identities and generations. The contrast between black ink and white paper amplifies the sense of division, the rough texture of the woodblock print gives the line a wounded quality. There’s nothing on either side of that line – just the silences, absences and ruptures left in the wake of displacement.
Dividing Line interrogates the arbitrariness of borders. This resonates with my own perspective on the divisions we create within society. For me, it reflects the separations we impose between the privileged and the marginalised, and the invisible yet powerful barriers that exist within families, homes, communities. My artistic practice explores similar themes, though on a more personal scale. Each time I see it, Dividing Line reveals something new. I used to view it as a reference to a larger historical event. Now, it resonates on a personal level too.
So much of Zarina’s work explores and questions our idea of belonging. Her seminal work Home is a Foreign Place is a collection of 36 woodcut prints. Each has an abstract image plus a word written in her mother tongue, Urdu, and represents her recollections of the home she grew up in. In Letters from Home, she integrates poetry and personal letters from her sister into her printmaking. It’s personal, it’s poetic, it’s powerful – one can’t help but connect with the way she builds on memories and experiences.
Zarina’s works bear the mark of her interest in architecture and mathematics, particularly geometry. She almost never used colours. Her work could be described as minimal, but they’re anything but simple. While most printmakers seek expression through layers of ink and intricate designs, Zarina’s practice is a lesson in restraint. View them closely, see when they were made and what they’re trying to represent. You’ll find that in capturing a personal memory, questioning her own idea of home, using sparse elements, she’s telling profound stories about us all.
Artist bio: Narayan Chandra Biswas is from Bastar, Chhattisgarh and lives in Vadodara, Gujarat. His practice weaves personal and collective histories, using sculptural forms and architectural motifs.
From HT Brunch, April 05, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
