Zarina (artist) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Zarina
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| Born |
Zarina Rashid
16 July 1937 Aligarh, United Provinces, British Raj
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| Died | 25 April 2020 (aged 82) London, England
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| Nationality | India United States |
| Education | Atelier 17 |
Zarina Hashmi (born July 16, 1937 – died April 25, 2020), known simply as Zarina, was an artist from India and America. She was a talented printmaker who lived and worked in New York City. Her art included drawings, prints, and sculptures. Zarina's work is often linked to a style called Minimalism, which uses simple shapes and forms. She used abstract and geometric designs to create art that made people feel something deep inside.
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About Zarina's Life
Zarina Rashid was born on July 16, 1937, in Aligarh, which was part of British India at the time. Her father, Sheikh Abdur Rashid, taught at Aligarh Muslim University. Her mother, Fahmida Begum, was a homemaker.
Zarina was very smart and earned a degree in mathematics from Aligarh Muslim University in 1958. After that, she traveled to learn different ways of making prints. She studied in Thailand, and then at a famous studio called Atelier 17 in Paris, France, where she learned from Stanley William Hayter. She also learned from printmaker Tōshi Yoshida in Tokyo, Japan. Later in her life, she lived and created art in New York City.
In the 1980s, Zarina was part of the board at the New York Feminist Art Institute. She also taught workshops there, showing people how to make paper. She helped with a feminist art magazine called Heresies, where she worked on a special issue about women from different parts of the world.
Zarina passed away in London on April 25, 2020, due to health complications.
Her Unique Art Style
Zarina's art was deeply shaped by who she was: an Indian woman born into a Muslim family, and someone who spent her life traveling. She often used designs from Islamic art, especially the regular, repeating geometric shapes you see in Islamic architecture. The simple and abstract geometric style of her early artworks has been compared to artists like Sol LeWitt, who were also part of the Minimalist movement.
Zarina's art often explored the idea of "home." For her, home wasn't just a physical place, but a feeling or an idea that could change and move. Her artworks often featured symbols that made people think about movement, being spread out from one's homeland (called diaspora), or being forced to leave home (exile).
For example, in her woodblock print called Paper Like Skin, she shows a thin black line that goes upwards across a white background. This line starts from the bottom right and goes to the top left. The line looks a bit like a map, winding and turning, suggesting a border between two places or perhaps a journey that isn't finished yet.
Awards and Special Recognition
Zarina received many awards and fellowships throughout her career, recognizing her important contributions to art. Here are a few:
- 2007: She was an artist-in-residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia.
- 1990: She received a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation.
- 1989: She won the Grand Prize at the International Biennial of Prints in Bhopal, India.
- 1974: She received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation in Tokyo.
- 1969: She won the President's Award for Printmaking in India.
Major Exhibitions
Zarina's work was shown in many important art exhibitions around the world. In 2011, she was one of four artists chosen to represent India for the very first time at the Venice Biennale, a huge international art show.
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles held the first big show of her work in 2012. This exhibition, called Zarina: Paper Like Skin, later traveled to other famous museums like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.
From 2017 to 2018, Zarina was an Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. This time ended with a solo exhibition called Zarina: Dark Roads and a book titled Directions to My House.
Her artworks are also part of the permanent collections in major museums, meaning they are always on display or kept there. These include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (the National Library of France).
See also
In Spanish: Zarina (artista) para niños
