The Burning Purity of Zarina Hashmi

S Kalidas | The Wire | 29th April 2020

Zarina’s family was ravaged by the partition of India and Pakistan. That anguished process gave her oeuvre its focus – a contemplation of home and “in-betweenness”. Memory, she wrote “is the only lasting possession we have”. Her austere monochromatic aesthetic resembles minimalist abstraction, but is “resolutely rooted in the Indo-Persian tradition … step wells, niches and arches”. Images are here.