Lot 268: Zarina Hashmi (B. 1937)

Spiral
Signed, titled and dated on reverse: Spiral Zarina 82
Cast paper; edition 1 of 2
Approx. 46 3/4 in. (118.7 cm.) in diameter

L. Liebmann, 'Zarina's Balm,' ArtForum, January 1988, p. 74.

Zarina Hashmi's art has no point of termination. A true product of the global village, she has lived in over 25 different cities and towns, referring to each of them as her home. Growing up in Pre-Partitioned India, Zarina traveled extensively through Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and has lived in the United States since the 1970s. Largely known for her work in prints (see lot 329) she has studied print making in Thailand, Japan, in Paris, at the Atelier 17, and in Germany. Zarina's life as well as her art erodes the distinction between place and home and her multifaceted nationality is a major source of her inspiration. Trained in traditional Indian paper making, Zarina culled natural materials from her hometown in India, including bits of glass, earth and local minerals, to construct the paper in the cast spiral. The use of an organic medium and the meticulous handcrafting of the piece are ironically utilized to produce a remote and mathematic cast of corrugated industrial tubing. In this way the work straddles both the natural and unnatural, primordial and man made, embodying the dichotomy of Zarina's environment. Both personal anecdotes and religious symbolism lend significance to her use of the spiral. Often scrutinizing the way the local snakes of her childhood home in Aligarh twisted and coiled amongst each other, Zarina attributes part of her initial fascination with the spiral to this reptilian curvature. However, interested as well in the Sufi idea of indicating the divine through the symbolic, the spiral takes on a spiritual element suggesting Tantra's Kundalini, an emblem of energy, reawakening and the path towards enlightenment. Influenced by conceptual artists Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein and Jean Arp as well as the minimal sculpture of Richard Serra, her art employs complex thought processes in producing clean, straightforward art. Process, medium and concept become as integral to the success of a work as its final aesthetic. Zarina's art has no temporal destination because her journey never ceases, she is always and never at home in the world. Just as the spiral continues infinitely towards a hypothetical center; it is only the journey that remains concrete, in Zarina Hashmi's vision, the journey is all that is essential.