The work of Zarina Hashmi is defined by her adherence to the personal and the elemental. Best known as a printmaker, Hashmi prefers to carve instead of draw the line, to gouge the surface rather than build it up. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, including most recently Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions from 1940s. The Third Mind-American Artists Contemplate Asia 1860-1989 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Gouge-The Modern Woodcut at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, a traveling exhibition organized by MOCA, Los Angeles.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The artist lives and works in New York. Hashmi was one of a group of artists who represented India at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.