What is "zarina"

Zarina Hashmi (born 1937) is an Indian artist who produces work in a number of forms, primarily using paper. Her work spans drawing, printmaking, papermaking, sculpture, and drawing. It is abstract and minimal and explores the concept of home.

Born in Aligarh, India, she earned a degree in mathematics before studying a variety of printmaking methods in Thailand, France (where she was apprenticed to Stanley William Hayter), and Japan. She has lived and worked in New York since the 1970s.

During the 1980s, Zarina served as a board member of the New York Feminist Art Institute and an instructor of papermaking workshops at the affiliated Women's Center for Learning. While on the editorial board of the feminist art journal Heresies, she contributed to the 'Third World Women' issue.

Zarina was one of four artists/artist-groups to represent India in its first entry at the Venice Biennale in 2011.

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles organized the first retrospective of her work in 2012. Entitled Zarina: Paper Like Skin, the exhibition traveled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has also been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Examples of her work are in the permanent art collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France.