Decolonizing Western Narratives of Modern Art

HYPERALLERGIC
By Emily Sun

Zarina, single woodcut from “Home is a Foreign Place” (1999), portfolio of 36 woodcut chine collé with Urdu text print on paper and mounted on paper, 8 x 6 inches; sheet: 16 x 13 inches

The 36 woodcut prints in Zarina’s portfolio, “Home is A Foreign Place” (1999), strike me at the base of my throat. Abstracted images mutate and bear different Urdu and English words, beginning with “Home,” a floorplan of the artist’s childhood house in Aligarh, India. A dark barrier, “Wall,” hollows out into a circle, “Sky.” “Dust,” an earthen black block, settles beside “Language,” a rest, the musical symbol for silence. Zarina doesn’t illustrate words so much as unravel them, revealing the buried places from which we speak. Zarina’s lexicon captures how contemporary meanings of home multiply through loss, becoming more challenging, yet necessary, to articulate. Her prints greet visitors to the Met Breuer exhibition Home is a Foreign Place, which remaps Western narratives of modern art in a global context of decolonization and displacement. [More]