Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art
Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art
Property from a Private Collection, Manhattan
Zarina
Road Lines
Auction Closed
March 21, 06:10 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private Collection, Manhattan
Zarina
1937 - 2020
Road Lines
A portfolio of 4 etchings and an Urdu couplet by Allama Muhammed Iqbal; Etchings printed in black on Arches Cover buff paper and chine collé on Nepalese handmade paper; text printed on buff paper
Signed, dated, titled and editioned '12/35 Road Lines I-IV Zarina 96' along lower edge on all four works
Edition 12 of 35 + 2 APs
Image: each approximately 5 ⅜ x 3 ⅞ in. (13.6 x 9.9 cm.)
Folio: each approximately 9 ⅞ x 7 ⅞ in. (25 x 20.1 cm.)
Quantity: 4
Executed in 1996
S. Ray, Zarina: Weaving Memories 1990 - 2006, Bodhi Art, 2007, illustrations unpaginated (another from the edition)
A. Pesenti, Zarina: Paper Like Skin, Hammer Museum and DelMonico Books, Prestel 2012, illustration p. 28 (Road Lines I) and 94-97 (in full) (another from the edition)
Born in 1937, Zarina was a witness to the traumas of Partition. Her family’s upheaval during this time resulted in her lifelong quest to explore and understand issues associated with personal and communal loss, and the meaningful impact of certain places and memories. The main artistic themes of Zarina's career have centered around displacement and belonging, powerfully explored in her series of etchings and woodblock engravings such as Home Is a Foreign Place (1999), Atlas of my World (2001) and Cities I Called Home (2010).
Road Lines (1996) is another example and relates to the annual trip Zarina made to visit her aging parents in Karachi, Pakistan. The lines in these etchings do not have a beginning or an end – highlighting the journey rather than the destination, and giving the sense that this is a journey that never ends.
As ever in Zarina's work, the medium is of paramount importance. The Nepalese paper Zarina uses is as much a part of the work as the printed lines – 'the brittle fibers... blend into the image and become part of it, like random remnants retrieved from the route.' (A. Pesenti, Zarina: Paper Like Skin, Hammer Museum and DelMonico Books, Prestel 2012, p. 28)
On the fifth image, a couplet from an Urdu poem by Allama Muhammed Iqbal, reads 'One who broke away from the caravan and got disillusioned by the faith'. (J. Brodsky, ‘The Imprint of a Transnational Life,’ Weaving Memory 1990 – 2006, Bodhi Art, 2006, unpaginated) These lines further summon feelings of displacement, and the notion of a journey in flux.