For the month of March, we’re highlighting South Asian women artists as a part of the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ #5WomenArtists campaign. Each of these artists have work in the Hundal Collection at South Asia Institute.

Zarina Hashmi

Zarina Hashmi is an Indian-born, American artist whose work spans from minimal drawing to printmaking and sculpture. Although she lived in New York for over 40 years, she never considered it home, identifying herself as an exile. She never forgot her homeland and felt her biggest loss was the poetry in her native language, Urdu, and resorted to YouTube nightly to fulfill that need.

Zarina is fascinated by architecture, especially Islamic architecture, which is reflected in the geometry and structural purity in her works.
Her works have been featured in major exhibitions and are represented in important public and private collections including those of the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Hundal Collection at the South Asia Institute in Chicago.

Zarina was deeply affected by the Partition of the Indian subcontinent by the British. This is reflected in the work from the Hundal Collection titled “Atlas of My World” depicting the infamous Radcliffe Line. Zarina also used writing as the subject of her work frequently. In her series “Letters from Home” she preserves communications from her sister, Rani, yet another reminder of her dislocated status. The “Last Letter”, also from the Hundal Collection, features heavy black lines reminiscent of a black border of mourning and yet another reminder of her deep affection for her sister from whom she was separated.

Nasreen Mohamedi

Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–1990) born in Karachi and raised in Mumbai, was one of the most significant artists to emerge in post-independence India. She created a body of work that demonstrates a singular and sustained engagement with abstraction. After studying in London, she returned to India and joined the faculty at the University of Baroda. Seated alone in her studio late into the night while classical Indian music played in the background, she created her profoundly minimalist abstract works in pencil and ink on paper, depicting organic forms, delicate grids, and dynamic, hard-edged lines that were a marked deviation from mainstream figurative art of that era.

Mohamedi’s works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Tate in London, Kunsthalle in Basel, and can be found in several major private collections. Her works in the Hundal Collection at SAI are examples of her early chaotic looking ink works from the 60’s. She was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, a degenerative neurologic condition, at a young age, and as her condition worsened, she resorted to the use of architect’s tools to draw. As a result, her later works took on a sparse form of geometric abstraction with lines and ellipses, although stray droplets of ink or marks from a cup convey her struggle with her hand movements.

Naiza Khan

Naiza Khan is known for her painting, printmaking, sculpture and installations.

Born (1968) in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan and London, United Kingdom. She trained at Ruskin School of Drawing and Fined Art, Oxford University and the Wimbledon College of Art, London. Her work has been exhibited at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Colombo Art Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Cairo Biennale and most recently at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited in New York City, Ferrara, Italy, Dubai, UAE, Murcia Spain, and is collected by many prominent international collectors.

Over a period of 25+ years, Naiza has created works relating to the female identity and exploration of places and people. Her series of steel sculptures of lingerie, corsets and chastity belts, with latex, feathers and organza examine the “contradictions around the sensuality and control of the female body”. The artist spent several years repeatedly visiting and documenting the landscape the Island of Manora, just off the shore of Karachi. The island is an example of the transformation of neighborhoods where whole neighborhoods are abandoned and communities displaced in attempts to “modernize” whole areas of a country. The original plan to turn the island into a modern utopia never materialized and the island remains essentially abandoned and in decay. Khan depicts these abandoned buildings and piles of discarded items in the work (Membrane II) from the Hundal Collection.

Lala Rukh

Lala Rukh (1948-2017), the Pakistani minimal abstract artist, activist and feminist was born in Lahore. She received her master’s degree from Punjab University and the University of Chicago and she served on the faculty of the Punjab University and later the National College of Art in Lahore. Her works have been exhibited in the UAE, China and Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. Recently the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Tate in London have acquired her works, which are also found in many major international private collections.

Lala is also remembered for her relentless activism to raise awareness for women’s rights in Pakistan, which lead to her incarceration for a short time in 1983. She founded the Women’s Action Forum in response to the gender inequity that was prevalent. When printers refused to print the subversive WAF posters she started doing it herself in her backyard!

Lala Rukh was recognized for her artwork late in life as she kept her artistic practice very private. She found uninhabited spaces appealing and created the series in the Hundal Collection titled “Tranquility Amid Turmoil” after she saw a brilliant river from an airplane window. In the works, the delicate ethereal silver waves are highlighted on darkened photographic paper that results in a brooding, grey sky and black sea.

Rana Begum

Rana Begum, a London-based artist was born in Sylhet, Bangladesh in 1977. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her works have been widely exhibited internationally in the UK, Europe, and Asia. Rana was awarded the Abraaj Prize in 2017 for her 100 square meter installation of a floating platform covered in tinted glass tiles. Her works have been acquired by major international institutions and private and public collections.

Rana’s minimalist vibrantly colored works blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture. They are inspired by her memories of the geometric patterns of Islamic art and urban architecture of her childhood. The works vary in size as well, ranging from the small paintings that comprise the installation from the Hundal Collection to larger two and three-dimensional works to large scale installations on the walls of buildings. She uses a variety of industrial materials in her works – Perspex, glass, aluminum, and more. Although her works appear austerely minimalist at first glance as one moves the colors change and the viewer discovers something new with each change in the interplay of light and color. She has an innate love for color that is reminiscent of her experiences watching the play of light in the rice fields in Bangladesh. The multicultural environment in London, where she has her studio and is raising her two young children, has also prompted her to take great pride in her heritage.

Five Women Artists

Zarina Hashmi

Nasreen Mohamedi

Naiza Khan

Lala Rukh

Rana Begum