Home is a foreign place

 

The word ‘Home’, is attributed to a place of comfort-a place which is familiar to us in every aspect but Zarina Hashmi, titles her work, ‘Home is a foreign place’. Most of her works, like, ‘Dividing Lines’, ‘Cities I Called Home’ and ‘Home is a Foreign Place’ deal with the issues of displacement due to partition or new boundaries being created. Apart from displacement she also works with the themes of memory and traveling. Although these themes are the central focus of many other artists’ works, Zarina Hashmi is significantly known for it. The art work chosen to be discussed in this paper is titled, ‘Home is a Foreign Place’.

Zarina’s works are like her personal journal reflecting the events of her life as she travels to different places. The effects of this dislocation are brought forward through very refined mesh of diagrams and maps which capture the memory of an event, an emotion, a place and its ambiance.  In an interview, while talking about her work Zarina says:

“I was born and grew up in India; my eye was trained by what I saw around me. The last fifty years I have spent looking at other cultures, I have learned a lot from those encounters. Nevertheless, I have emotionally come back to where I started. I consider myself a contemporary artist, like many others artists of my generation who were born in one place and live in other places. My work is a synthesis of all the traditions I passed through.” 

This specific work comprises of 36 different remnants of memory depicted on wood and placed together as a wall installation. The fragments of her memory emanate a strong feeling of nostalgia. There is a presence of emptiness in these simple linear drawings.  Trained in printmaking, Zarina uses this technique on both paper and wood, which she herself carves. Wood is an interesting medium to be used as it is a largely used material in our homes-it is a part of the basic structure of a house. Wood makes one feel nostalgic as the smell and the feel of the surface makes one travel into a different time and place. On the other hand, even though paper is not a very durable material but it is used for mapping and tracking history.  In a way, Zarina Hashmi is tracing her own history with places she has lived in, through her drawings; mapping them and installing them together as she remembers them in fragments just like parts of memories are remembered and associated with certain places. There is a connection between all her works-they follow the same path created by her web of drawings.  Although, her drawings are minimalist, they reflect emotions and strong expressions. The bold black ink lines say much more than a busy painting, the feeling of loss being dominant in all of these works. The impact of the India-Pakistan partition is predominantly reflected in her works. Her work is a great example of an art work that reflects feelings of both physical and mental displacement, memory, traveling and nostalgia in a very refined and minimalist way-her use of monochromatic ink expresses emotions much more dynamically than an array of vibrant colors.