Ten woodcuts by Zarina: based on Urdu proverbs

Rani—Kishwar Chishti—gathered the proverbs the sisters most loved and remembered from their childhood and youth. Zarina responded to those chosen words with images, translating the wit, cadence, and compressed wisdom of familiar speech into spare visual form.

The exchange belonged to a long creative collaboration between them. Spoken memory became a shared working material: Rani’s selection set each image in motion, while Zarina’s woodcuts allowed the sayings to move between voice, script, and printed form without illustrating them too literally.

In the same year, Rani compiled Urdu kay aik so aik mahavray (One Hundred and One Urdu Proverbs), illustrated and published by Zarina. The book gives the wider gathering of sayings a written life; the portfolio holds a more intimate selection.

The 1991 portfolio presents the Urdu together on a separate final leaf. Two decades later, Zarina returned to the blocks and brought each proverb directly beneath its image.