BIO
Zarahlena is a Berlin-based Mexican-German transdisciplinary artist. Her artistic practice encompasses photography, performance art, and installation. By emphasizing embodiment through these mediums, her work acts as a platform for creative, spiritual, and social exploration, aiming to address the injustices and conflicts deeply rooted in the body.
Her artistic journey over the past years has focused especially on performance art, alongside activist and collective art. Her work has been presented in various spaces, including galleries, public spaces, festivals, clubs, and most recently, the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany.
In 2017, following the 19 September earthquake in Mexico City, she co-founded an aid group that collected donations and provided hot meals in the affected areas. The following year, she co-organized the Heal Her Festival CDMX, a five-day arts and healing festival on gender violence that attracted 200 participants and national media coverage.
After being selected for the Re-Imagine Your City in 2022 program, which promotes the socio-cultural transformation of cities, she co-founded the Radical Care Lab, an artistic collective focused on exploring the theme of care. Working primarily in Berlin, the collective has been invited to create artistic activities interacting with locals in the city of Pirmasens in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. In addition, Zarahlena has been awarded an artist residency grant in Tbilisi, Georgia, to research art projects in public space and connect with others working on this theme, which took place at the end of August 2023.
Zarahlena specializes in artistic photography, performance, ritual & ceremonial art, and cultural documentation. In addition to private commissions, her clients have included yoga studios, non-profit foundations, the Mexican Embassy in Germany, and the Ministry of Culture in Mexico. As an event photographer, she has documented the heavy music scene at shows and festivals in Europe and Latin America.
Her practices are based on the principle of honoring darkness as something sacred.
