Travels with Rani

This pair of prints traces the real and imagined journeys in India of Zarina and her older sister Rani. One image articulates place-names, and the other offers an abstracted outline of the route. In both works the shape of India can be vaguely discerned, as the sisters' travels extended from Aligarh in the north to the southern tip of the country. Zarina based the woodcut on a map of Indian railways, tracing the design onto a woodblock (in reverse), carving it by hand, and then printing it in etching ink. For the intaglio print, a professional calligrapher in Pakistan wrote the letters, which were pasted individually onto a translucent paper. The artist then had a plate made photographically and faced in steel in order to create the print.