Architecture
Home, threshold, entrance, wall, corner, and distance begin with the structures through which a remembered house can be entered and measured.
Portfolio · 1999
Home is a Foreign Place
A poem in images and Urdu words—one of Zarina’s defining meditations on memory, language, and the idea of home.
Date1999
FormatThirty-six woodcuts, each paired with an Urdu word
MediumWoodcuts with Urdu text on Kozo paper, mounted on Somerset paper (artist record and Ishara guide)
DimensionsMoMA: image 8 × 6 in.; sheet 16 × 13 in. each. The Met records sheets of 16⅛ × 13⅛ in.
Edition25 numbered sets; five further Roman-numeral sets (artist record and Ishara guide)
The portfolio comprises thirty-six woodcuts, each pairing an abstract image with a word written in Urdu, Zarina’s mother tongue. Read from left to right in six rows, the sequence moves through architecture, weather, time, distance, and loss.
The portfolio begins with a spare plan of the house in Aligarh and the word ghar—both house and home. Its vocabulary turns memory into a sequence of thresholds, walls, seasons, and celestial signs.
The work followed an earlier sequence of nine homes. Zarina developed this portfolio while contesting an eviction from her New York home and studio—a case she won. She later said the threat made her think about the impermanence of homes. Years of moving among Santa Cruz, New York, and Karachi gave the question of home a changing answer.
Each image was carved and printed as an “idea-image” responding to a chosen word. Fine handmade papers were printed and mounted onto stronger sheets, allowing material from different papermaking traditions to meet within a single portfolio.
The thirty-six pairings move between intimate memory and universal signs. Urdu is not an explanatory caption added after the image; word and form generate meaning together, allowing the portfolio to be read as a visual poem about what survives distance and displacement.
Reading the sequence
From room to world
The sheets operate individually and as one unfolding structure.
Atmosphere
Morning, dawn, afternoon, hot breeze, rain, and night recover place through sensation and the passage of time rather than through a complete narrative.
Signs and loss
Roads, maps, celestial forms, despair, and hope move the portfolio beyond one house toward migration, separation, and the unstable idea of return.
Complete sequence
Words in their original order
The complete sequence appears once, in its original order. Select any image to examine the full sheet, paper edge, inscriptions, and Urdu word.
Before and after
