Zarina Hashmi

(1937-2020)

Travels with Rani I & Travels with Rani II Travels with Rani I: 42.2 x 38 cm (16 5/8 x 14 15/16 in); Travels with Rani II: 44.5 x 37.8 cm (17 1/2 x 14 7/8 in)

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Mumbai.
Acquired from Gallery Espace, 2011.

Published
Gallery Espace, Zarina Hashmi-Recent Works, Archana, New Delhi, 2011 (another edition)

Zarina: Weaving Memory, 1990-2006, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2007 (another edition illustrated, unpaginated)

R. Hoskote, Everyone Agrees: It's About to Explode, Venice Biennale, India Pavilion, Venice, 2011 (another edition illustrated, unpaginated).

U. Prakash, A World of Loss And Displacement, Asian Art News, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2014, p. 70 (another edition illustrated)

Courtney A., Stewart, Seven Questions for Zarina Hashmi, The Met website, February 9, 2017.

Altered Inheritances: Home Is a Foreign Place, exhibition catalogue, Dubai, 2019, p.2 (another edition illustrated)

Z. Jumabhoy, Far From Home, Artforum, Vol. 58, No. 1, September 2019 (another edition illustrated)

I. Dadi and H. Nassar, Lines of Control, Partition as a Productive Space, 2012, p. 171 (one from another edition illustrated)

Z. Jumabhoy, Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020): An artist whose work is woven with ideas of displacement and mobility, Scroll online, 29 April 2020 (other editions illustrated)

C.A. Stewart, Seven Questions for Zarina Hashmi, Ruminations, Metropolitan Museum website, 9 February 2017 (another edition illustrated)

V.F. Zamindar, Zarina's 'Dark Roads': Exile, Statelessness and the Tenacity of Nostalgia, Third Text Online, 28 November 2018 (another edition illustrated)

S. Kalidas, The Burning Purity of Zarina Hashmi, The Wire online, 29 April 2020 (Travels with Rani I - another edition illustrated)

Exhibited
Gallery Espace, Zarina Hashmi-Recent Works, Archana, New Delhi, 15th January - 15th February, 2011 (another edition)

New York, Luhring Augustine | Chelsea, June 20, 2009 - July 31, 2009 (another edition)

Paris, Galerie Jaeger Bucher, Zarina Hashmi, Noor, 26 March – 21 May, 2011 (another edition)

Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space, 21 January - 1 April 2012 (another edition)

Note: Zarina has loaned a series of this work to the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Memory is the only lasting possession we have. I have made my life the subject of my work, using the images of home, the places I have visited, and the stars I have looked up to. I just want a reminder that I did not imagine my experiences.
-Zarina

Zarina and her sister Rani were inseparable and they shared a special bond that had a significant influence on Zarina and her art. They collaborated on multiple projects and Zarina would ask for Rani's input on her work.

In Travels with Rani I & II we can see the physical distance travelled by the sisters during their time in India and Pakistan. Whilst Zarina's family relocated to Karachi, Pakistan after Partition, Zarina undertook her degree at Aligarh Muslim University in India and then got married, after which she travelled the globe extensively. In Travels with Rani I,' Zarina has overlaid the map of India and Pakistan on top of Urdu poetry. Zarina had a lifelong love of Urdu poetry, and would listen to it on a daily basis. The poetry in this work enhances the themes of displacement, memory and identity, all of which are constants in her works. The act of writing and the writing itself becomes a metaphor for the act of remembering and preserving one's history.

In Travels with Rani II Zarina has dispensed with the poetry, and instead created a contrast through the use of the two colours employed, black and white. Here the subject of the work, the 'travels' as illustrated by the map is the focal point. The map is surrounded by negative space which is entirely submerged in black, a metaphor perhaps for darkness. Zarina has drowned out the horrors of Partition and instead focussed on her memories that are beautiful and pristine.

To see another edition of the work sold at Christies, see South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art, New York, 17th March 2021, lot 1006.