Portfolio · 2003
These Cities Blotted into the Wilderness
Nine city maps bring places marked by violence, displacement, and memory into one field of fragile paper, black line, and Urdu language.
Date2003
MediumNine woodcuts with Urdu text printed in black on Okawara paper and mounted on Somerset paper
SheetApproximately 16 × 14 in.
Edition20
PortfolioNine woodcuts with a title sheet and colophon
Each sheet names a city through a map and an Urdu inscription. Rather than offering neutral diagrams, the sequence holds places transformed by war, partition, exile, and the distance between lived experience and news.
Across the portfolio, maps become witnesses rather than guides. Streets, borders, and urban plans are compressed into black marks on fragile paper, placing Grozny, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Beirut, Jenin, Baghdad, Kabul, Ahmedabad, and New York within a shared meditation on violence, displacement, memory, and survival.
Archive sequence
Individual sheets
The sequence moves through Grozny, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Beirut, Jenin, Baghdad, Kabul, Ahmedabad, and New York, joining distant cities through destruction, displacement, and memory.