Shelters

Zarina Hashmi led an itinerant life as the wife of an Indian diplomat whose official posting took the duo to different corners of the world. In her works, questions are posed about migration, the Partition, and her parents’ move to Pakistan. Her minimalistic experimentations seeking roots and history are manifested in lines and geometrical shapes. Geometry, which Hashmi regarded as a ‘sacred practice’, formed the basis of almost all her work, composed as it is within the three basic geometric forms of the square, circle and triangle. Here, the artist has used numerous triangles to denote shelters. Hashmi’s is a rare and deceptive variety of abstraction, the product of a deeply philosophical and meditative mind that narrates stories and yet rises to a realm above them.