Portfolio · 2004
Letters from Home
Six unsent Urdu letters from Zarina’s sister Rani became the source for eight prints. Handwriting meets plans, routes, houses, and maps—private family news remade as an architecture of distance and loss.
Date2004
Source lettersSix unsent letters from Rani
PortfolioEight prints
MediumPortfolio of woodcut and metalcut chine collé prints
Primary sheet22¼ × 14 15/16 in.
Secondary support12 × 9 in.
Edition20, with artist’s proofs
Rani wrote six letters from Pakistan about deaths in the family, the sale of her home, and how much she missed Zarina. The letters were not sent at the time. Years later Zarina used their Urdu handwriting with floor plans, houses, and city maps to make eight prints.
The final print returns to the first letter, now crossed by parallel black lines. Across the portfolio, handwritten Urdu, architectural forms, maps, and fragments of correspondence hold intimacy and distance on the same surface.
The complete Urdu correspondence remains visible in the photographs as part of the work.
Archive sequence
Individual sheets
Presented in the numbered I–VIII order. Eight prints draw on six letters, and Letter VIII returns to the first, giving the portfolio a circular movement through separation, handwriting, and memory.