Talwar Gallery is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition of works by Zarina Bhimji. Cleaning the Garden is an exploration of formal gardens in Britain and Spain as both cultural metaphors and personal embodiments. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States; featuring lightboxes, photographs, and etched mirrors.

Zarina Bhimji’s work invites and disarms by its simplicity and eloquence. Once inside, there is nowhere to go except to traverse the labyrinths of metaphorical and personal excursions; both real and imagined. As the artist has remarked, “What I am exploring here is the line between what we know to be true and what we believe to be true, the border between fact and fiction. It is this space that the memory occupies… In a sense the subject matter of this work is incidental; it is not just about the gardens, it is about the memory spaces they represent.”

“Zarina Bhimji’s images and arrangements of objects protect against disappearance, reclaim the past as alive, refuse the deadness of representation by awakening the viewer’s sensory responses- the smell of red spices, the feel of red tulip petals like satiny skin, the shudder of dread of the ghostly limbs in their glass boxes. In Zarina Bhimji’s hands, images make gestures of reparations for hurts, or reclaim fleeting, intense moments of consciousness, by locating and defining the stuffs which have become intimately saturated with memories.” says Marina Warner in her catalogue essay at Kettle’s Yard.