Life · 1971–1972
Bonn felt temporary beside Paris, but Zarina used the brief posting to learn a new print process and to continue thinking through maps and movement.
A short posting
Saad was posted to Bonn from 1971 to 1972. Zarina found the city more provisional than Paris, but she made the most of the interval by learning silkscreen and continuing her work with maps.
She encountered work by artists including Carl Andre, Nancy Graves, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Beuys. Driving on the German autobahns gave another physical experience of speed, direction, and routes across a landscape.
In retrospect
Bonn was not a city in which Zarina wished to settle. Its brevity was part of its character: long enough to learn, look, and make, but short enough to remain an interlude in a life already marked by movement.
The city later entered Homes I Made / A Life in Nine Lines as a pared-down plan, one of nine architectures remembered after the addresses themselves had changed or disappeared.