I took my friend to visit the Art Institute of Chicago recently and it was all fantastic, but this exhibit stood out to me the most. Zarina is, like all one-named artists, awesome. She is Indian-American and (I'm pretty sure) still alive and she's lived and worked all over the world--India, Thailand, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States, to name a few. The work that was on display at the Art Institute mostly featured paper in interesting and different ways, though there were also some of her advertisements for feminist happenings in the 1970s and other drawings.
My favorite works of hers were these pieces of paper that she had punctured with needles or other objects to make little holes all over them in different designs. From a distance these pieces blended in with the white walls of the museum and seemed, frankly, quite boring but up close they were incredibly detailed and beautiful. After walking through all of the colorful impressionist art in the museum, it was really fascinating to see what one can do without color but simply with texture and materials.
I like the idea of using museum exhibits like this one in writing secondary sources. I feel like a complex hyphenated American figure like Zarina could be the perfect object of an American Studies essay. She's also a bit mysterious and it's hard to really get to know who she is by looking at one of her exhibits. She's transnational, radical, and pushes artistic limits -- sounds like AMST to me!
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