Lot 117: Ghar (Home)

Zarina (B. 1937)
Ghar (Home)
signed, editioned, titled and dated '1/2 'Ghar Zarina 1988' (on the reverse)
edition of 1/2 cast paper sculpture
approx. 24 x 32½in. (61 x 82.5cm.)
Executed in 1988

With a remarkable career spanning more than four decades, Zarina's art evades much of the nomenclature intended to conveniently categorize and identify artists. Her work, which wavers boldly between the abstract and the representational, raises questions concerning meaning, stability, endurance, mobility, and the ephemeral nature of the concept of home. She has widely exhibited in New York, Pakistan, India, and San Francisco both within and without South Asian contexts and has been the recipient of numerous awards, notably the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship and the Alfred and Ester Gottlieb Foundation Grant.

Zarina explores the tenuous presence of geographical boundaries in her work, playing upon their simultaneous ability to divide and unite. A skilled printmaker, the artist studied the craft in India, Thailand, Japan, as well as in Paris, at the Atelier 17. Zarina's gift is in her profound understanding of the nature of the materials, where the process is an integral part of the creative imagination. Trained also in traditional Indian paper making, Zarina culls natural materials from her surroundings, bits of glass, earth and local minerals are mixed in the paper pulp and molded in their final form, leaving the faults and idiosyncrasies inherent in the natural substances in place. It is these imperfections in consistency and gradations in color that the artist relishes, working with paper, she believes, "is like working on your own skin." ( Conversation with Geeti Sen , Exhibition Catalogue, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, p 9.)

Her facility for form and color found both in her prints and sculptures is poetic in its economy of line and hue. Acutely aware of the many layers inherent within each work, Zarina reveals in a statement about Ghar, the careful consideration given to each stage of the creative process.

"Cast Paper was sized with graphite pigment and powdered Mica, then burnished with a soft cloth, to make it shimmer. The traditional Indian handmade paper was sized with wheat paste and then burnished with Agate stone. My interest in black ink made of charcoal or graphite (lead of pencil) is a life long fascination with the written word, on paper, scratched in wood or carved in stone. Homes ( Ghar ) are also made of stone, wood and paper and then go up in smoke." - Zarina, speaking about Ghar , August 2, 2007.

Her works are part of numerous highly esteemed collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, La Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris and are included in Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, a survey of the feminist art moment in the US during the 1970s.