New Delhi’s Gallery Espace, helmed by Renu Modi, has always trod a path that in subsequent years becomes a pilgrimage route for the others to follow. As of now, it is one of the few Indian galleries that shows regularly at the prestigious New York fair, The Armory Show, that got underway at Piers 92 and 94 in New York on March 3. While it had take a bouquet of artists to the show last year, this time it is showcasing a solo presentation by Zarina Hashmi, titled “Dialogue Between Night and Darkness.” This new body of work by Alighar-born and New York-based artist Hashmi (b. 1937), is a new body of work that re-touches the theme of ‘Home,’ a theme that has been present in the artist’s work for a long time. Through this new body of work, the artist expresses her thoughts on the plight of refugees fleeing Syria and Myanmar, the images of which have exposed the world over the past few months to the horrific consquences of man-made crises. One of the most acclaimed minimalist artists of her generation, Hashmi has chosen black as the dominant theme of her new body of work. Even though it directly alludes to the state of the refugees, it also lends a superlative aesthetic to her work because she has achieved an especially deep, velvet black by printing whole sheets of paper in solid black etching ink, which then forms the base of the collages. Printed sheets are gilded with pewter leaf and then roughly burnished, fragmenting the metallic surface. This process leaves only glints of precious metal atop the dark paper shapes.

Hashmi has for long been associated with Gallery Espace where her last solo show was in 2011. Her retrospective, “Zarina: Paper Like Skin,” was presented at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012) and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Art Institute of Chicago (both in 2013). She was part of the four artists/ artist-groups that first represented India at the Venice Biennale in 2011. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Tate Modern, London; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

A graduate in mathematics from the Aligarh Muslim University (B.Sc. (Hons.)), she veered towards art when she chose to study printmaking, first in India and then abroad. In 1960s and 1970s, she studied printmaking with S. W. Hayter and Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17 in Paris, and woodblock printing at Toshi Yoshido’s studio in Tokyo on a Japan Foundation Fellowship.

— The solo presentation by Gallery Espace is showcased at Booth #626, Pier 94, The Armory Show, 12th Ave at 55th Street, New York, NY 10019. The Armory Show runs through March 6