Zarahlena

Integrating my Latin American upbringing and Central Mexican-East Frisian/German background, my interdisciplinary art takes an embodied approach toward photography, performance art and installation. My artistic work functions as a creative, spiritual and social practice that addresses injustice and conflicts rooted in the body. I examine issues such as feminicide and gender-based violence in Latin America; the disconnection between human beings and nature that leads to ecological crises; and the need for radical practices of care for mental health.

I employ ceremonial and transgressive practices that connect my body to the more- than-human world. Exploring intense feelings such as pain and anger, I carry out repetitive movements, hold myself in (semi-)static positions for long periods of time, and integrate pain practices through piercing my skin with needles and hooks. This embodied process uses repetition as a catalyst to invite viewer engagement and unearth repressed emotions. Documenting these poetically charged durational performances, my self-portraiture utilizes digital, analogue and experimental techniques, such as hand-colouring or film soup.

Never fully belonging to a specific place or group, I find myself most at home in the liminal spaces between identities, disciplines, and psychic states.