Life · Places
Cities I Called Home
Places lived, remembered, and redrawn. Each city opens into a chapter of Zarina’s life, revealing how travel, architecture, memory, and displacement entered her work.
A geographic autobiography
Roads as companions
Zarina; Darwish quotation from Mural (2000)I am only a small part of a big universe, but we all have stories to tell. I am already eighty years old and time is running out. To quote the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “I don’t have enough time to tie my end to my beginning.”
I have learned a lot from my wanderings around the world and have always been very curious about how other people live. Now, in my old age, I want to go back to where I started. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I never left my house of four walls in India. I will never know the privilege of living out my days in the country in which I was born, speaking in my mother tongue.
There is truth to the phrase, “You can never go home again.” I do not feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go. In dreams and on sleepless nights, the fragrance of the garden, image of the sky, and sound of language returns. I go back to the roads I have crossed many times. They are my companions and my solace.
The city as method
A life read through places
These cities are more than stops in a chronology. Each changed how Zarina worked: Bangkok introduced woodcut; Paris made the print workshop a daily community; Delhi brought handmade paper, found wood, and the independence of a studio; Tokyo sharpened her attention to carving, paper, and restraint; New York gave her a place from which maps, houses, and borders could be reconsidered over four decades.
In works such as Homes I Made / A Life in Nine Lines and Cities I Called Home, biography becomes geography. A city can be remembered through a road, a room, a language, or a line cut into wood. The chapters below follow those connections between lived place and artistic form.
The portfolio sequence
City chapters
Choose a city to read its people, workshops, materials, works, and turning points.
The chapters follow the order of the places in Homes I Made / A Life in Nine Lines, rather than a strict timeline. New York follows Santa Cruz here as the open-ended home to which Zarina returned.
01Aligarh
Birth, family, mathematics, books, Urdu, and the courtyard at 8 Shibli Road.
→02Bangkok
Marriage, sea travel, hand-drawn maps, Thai language, and the discovery of printmaking.
→03New Delhi
A growing art community, the path to Atelier 17, and the independence of a studio of her own.
→04Paris
Atelier 17, intaglio and viscosity printing, abstraction, museums, books, and an international community.
→05Bonn
Silkscreen, maps, encounters with American art, and the turn toward worked white paper.
→06Tokyo
A Japan Foundation fellowship, an independent life, Japanese woodblock, and a renewed attention to paper.
→07Los Angeles
A gallery connection, a temporary landing from Tokyo, and a family journey across America.
→08Santa Cruz
Teaching, a second workshop, and repeated journeys between California, New York, and family in Pakistan before her full-time return to New York in 1998.
→09New York
A home and studio, feminist organizing, teaching, printing, maps, and more than four decades of practice.
→10London
A final address from which questions of home, memory, exile, and return remained open.
→Selected chronology
A life moving between places
The chronology separates repeated stays and returns that the portfolio gathers into a single city image. New York therefore appears before and after Santa Cruz here, while remaining after Santa Cruz in the artwork-led chapter sequence above.
Continue to the CV and exhibition histories →- 01
Aligarh
Childhood, mathematics, books, Urdu, and the remembered plan of 8 Shibli Road.
- 02
Bangkok
Marriage, journeys through Southeast Asia, hand-drawn maps, Thai, and the beginning of woodcut.
- 03
New Delhi
A growing artistic community and the decision to pursue printmaking more deeply.
- 04
Paris
Atelier 17, intaglio, viscosity printing, museums, books, and an international workshop community.
- 05
New Delhi
An independent studio practice shaped by handmade paper, found wood, and regular work.
- 06
Bonn
Silkscreen, maps, new encounters with American art, and the move toward worked white paper.
- 07
New Delhi
A return to the studio before a year of independent study and work in Japan.
- 08
Tokyo
Japanese woodblock, apprenticeship, paper, restraint, and a room of her own.
- 09
Los Angeles
A temporary landing, exhibition connections, and a journey across the United States.
- 10
New York
A home and studio, feminist organizing, teaching, collaborative print workshops, and citizenship.
- 11
Santa Cruz / New York
Teaching printmaking in California while sustaining her New York home and studio.
- 12
New York
A full-time return to the loft and two decades of major portfolios, sculpture, exhibitions, and recognition.
- 13
London
Her final years near family, with the work continuing to circulate internationally.
One life, many chapters
Begin with a city—or follow the journey in order
Together, these chapters trace the people, workshops, journeys, and turning points attached to each place.
Begin in Aligarh →