Santa Cruz gave Zarina a new workshop and a community of students, while the movement between coasts intensified her uncertainty about where home was located.
Santa Cruz 1992–1997 · from Homes I Made / A Life in Nine Lines, 1997
University of California
The responsibility of teaching
In 1992, on Krishna Reddy’s recommendation, Zarina accepted a position at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She moved temporarily to California while continuing to return to New York during breaks.
She valued the university’s printmaking workshop and her exchanges with students. Teaching was a responsibility she took seriously: Santa Cruz became the place where she concentrated on helping students make their work, while New York remained the place where she made much of her own.
Between homes
Dislocation as a working condition
During these years Zarina moved among Santa Cruz, New York, and Pakistan, where she visited family. Each journey changed the meaning of the word home. In California, New York could be home; in New York, Pakistan could be home; in Pakistan, America could be home.
That repeated disorientation became part of the thinking behind Home Is a Foreign Place, in which remembered rooms, Urdu words, and spare images hold intimacy and distance together.
“I went up and down and across America, across the world, and I really forgot where I was. I got totally confused about where home was.”
Zarina · legacy family site, courtesy A/P/A Institute at NYU
Teaching archive
Printmaking in Santa Cruz
Zarina taught printmaking at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1992 to 1997. These family photographs place her in the university print shop and among students during that period; individual dates, student names, and photographer credits remain to be confirmed.
University print shop · Santa Cruz teaching period, 1992–97 · family archiveZarina teaching · Santa Cruz, 1992–97 · family archiveZarina with students · Santa Cruz, 1992–97 · family archive
