Cosmopolitan Cartographies: Art in a Divided World

I went on a journey, the first piece I saw by Zarina, is a bronze sculpture of a house on wheels. The work at once suggests mobility and the futility of motion. At first glance it indicates the easy mobility of a home on the road, but if the wheels on this house were to turn they would pull against each other. The motion suggested at best is interrupted and circular, never straying far from its point of origin, as though tethered. I could not decide if the piece holds mobility and stasis together in tension or in collaboration, whether its rootedness is a lifeline or a constraint. Its surface is roughened by hundreds of marks, ranging from light scratches to deep gouges. It is a heavy, solid piece. Lifting it requires a surprising degree of effort. When I put it down a residue of gray patina (powder graphite) remained on my fingers and transferred to everything I touched.

It is not difficult to read in these characteristics a visual and tactile allegory of migration. Indeed, I was to discover that the invitation to create interpretive narratives is a persistent characteristic of Zarina's work. Her gestures are always spare, generally abstract, and yet richly allegorical. She uses elements that can be explained biographically: the wheels, for instance, are a reference to the aikkas [horse-drawn cart] ubiquitous in the Aligarh of her childhood. Yet her work is not restricted to autobiography, nor does its interpretation require that knowledge from the viewer. On the contrary, it is readily available for appropriation, for it engages the viewer through his/her own biography. Zarina often combines opposing impulses

such as motion and stillness, with the result that her works suggest repose over underlying tension, as though order must repeatedly be sought and achieved. The residue of discomfort they leave is a reminder that her pieces raise questions. Indeed, they are embodiments of ambiguity and paradox. Any answers or resolutions viewers may provide are our own; they are not acknowledged or affirmed by the work. The reticence of the work itself both enables and cautions against our interpretive activity.

I interviewed Zarina first in May 2001, and again a year later in May 2002. I requested the second interview because of the events of the intervening year: the tragedies of September 11; America's subsequent war in Afghanistan and persecution of Muslims within and outside its borders; the renewal of the Palestinian intifada and the Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestinian territories; and in February 2002 the attacks by Hindu fundamentalists on Muslims in Gujarat that resulted in the murder of some 2000 Muslims, the displacement of a further 100,000 people, and the destruction of 20,000 homes and businesses and 360 Muslim places of worship.¹ It seemed to me that the horrors of those few months must have compounded the difficulties of being a Muslim in the world, and particularly in a country led by a crusader.² Subsequent displays and reinforcements of deep geographic, economic, racial, religious divisions have tested cosmopolitan, secular people accustomed to embracing a wonderfully large, uncontainably heterogeneous world. I wanted to know what effect they might have on the aesthetic practice of one very cosmopolitan and determinedly secular Muslim artist. Our wide-ranging conversations are distilled in the following excerpts.

Born in Aligarh, India, in 1937, Zarina was educated at the University of Aligarh, where her father was a historian of medieval India. Although she had been exposed to the history of European art and to the great Moghul monuments of northern India, she traces her passion for printmaking to her first encounter with Japanese woodcut prints in Bangkok. She began to study woodcut techniques while in Bangkok and made her first print in 1961. Her formal art training began soon thereafter in Paris at Atelier 17, the school...