Portfolio · 2004
Letters from Home
Eight unsent Urdu letters from Zarina’s sister Rani come into contact with plans, routes, houses, and maps—private family news remade as an architecture of distance and loss.
Date2004
MediumPortfolio of woodcut and metalcut chine collé prints
Primary sheet22¼ × 14 15/16 in.
Secondary support12 × 9 in.
Edition20, with artist’s proofs
Rani wrote eight letters from Pakistan about the deaths of their parents, the sale of a beloved home, her children moving away, and Zarina’s absences. The letters were not sent at the time; years later Zarina overlaid their Urdu script with floor plans, houses, and city maps.
Across the portfolio, handwritten Urdu, architectural forms, maps, and fragments of correspondence hold intimacy and distance on the same surface.
Archive sequence
Individual sheets
Presented in Roman-numeral order. The photographed sheets are numbered impressions, not identified artist’s proofs; each letter, map, and architectural form retains its place within the complete sequence.
