In 1980, Zarina Hashmi, along with Ana Mendeita and Kazuko Miyamoto, curated 'Dialectics of Isolation: Third World Women Artists of the United States' at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, devising a platform for women of colour in a scene otherwise dominated by masculinity, and whiteness. Hashmi's intersectional approach still continues, enabled by a practice of transnational reach, mobilized not as much by private, institutional networks, but by a long investment in the social.
Hashmi engages a highly formal approach: and a process of abstraction and repetition of gesture is enabled by simple materials like light paper and black ink; small garland-like sculptures made of wood; or woodcuts with repeated motifs of fences, barbed wire, and architectural plans of interlocking courtyards and narrow passages. These are meditations on migration and domesticity that do not slip easily into the nostalgic, nor do they hold onto fixed identities of place.
- Skye Arundhati Thomas