Jenin; Grozny (from the portfolio These Cities Blotted into the Wilderness (Adrienne Rich after Ghalib))

Zarina is a master printmaker. Having initially studied print making in Bangkok and Tokyo and intaglio printing with S. W. Hayter at Atelier-17 in Paris in the 1960s, Zarina has perfected the craft and experimented with several innovative techniques over her four-decade career. In these two prints, City I (Grozny) and City V (Jenin), part of the These Cities Blotted into The Wilderness series, Zarina departs from mapping her personal experiences to explore the evolution of cities and the dislocation of their inhabitants as a result of politics and warfare. "The Chechnyan war is often called the forgotten war because there is nothing left. Nobody raises a voice or says anything [...] I was watching TV and there was this Chechen woman who said, "The world has forgotten us." I had a conversation with myself, and I said, "No, I haven't." So, I thought, somebody has to say it - that Chechnya existed [...] and also Jenin, the refugee camp on the West bank, which was in an area that was to become Palestine. It was attacked and bulldozed. I don't know if there are still people who live there, when you see the pictures, you only see rubble." (G. Sen, 'Interview: Zarina Hashmi', Art India, Mumbai, Volume XI, Issue I, Quarter 1, 2006, pp. 52-3)