About
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.
Artist Statement
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 experimental somatic and pain practices. 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.
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Exhibitions & Performances
(SELECTED WORK)
*Solo exhibitions
2023
- “Mother of Thousands”, at Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany. (Performance)
- Summer School, Re-Imagine Your City Program, Tbilisi, Gerogia. (Artist in Recidency)
- “Earth’s Elixir: A Reciprocal Juice Ceremony”, in public space at Nikolativiertel, Berlin-Mitte, Germany. (Performance)
- Radical Care Lab: 4-days art workshops & activities in public space, Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pflaz, Germany. Invited by Montag Stiftung Kunst und Gesellschaft.
- “Reciprocity”, at 1er Encuentro Latinoamericano de Performance Art, Berlin, Germany. Organized and curated by Hector Canonge. (Performance)
- “Gypsophila”, at SchwuZ, Berlin, Germany. (Performance)
- “Reciprocity” at Occult Mass – Temporary Temple zone, at OSCO – Openspace Hannover, Germany. (Performance)
- Radical Care Lab: Kick-off event of “What is your radical act of care? – a laboratory in public space”, panel talk and artistic workshop, at Zukunft am Ostkreuz, Berlin, Germany.
2022
- “Sculpture of the Dead”, at bpb Gallery, Berlin, Germany. (Photo exhibition)
- Art showcase and sale at Hot Printing: Druckfestival Offenbach, at Klingspor Museum. Offenbach am Main, Hessen, Germany.
- “Cual Sísifo”, at Video Art Festival PROYECTOR. Madrid, Spain. (Performance)
- “Reciprocity”, at Swampfest Berlin. Germany. (Installation)
2021
- “Women Exposed”, curated by Nadia Nervo. Online Exhibition.
- “Grant Activation: Healing through collaboration”. A talk with Burning Man Project.
- China Biennial. Online exhibition. (Video screening).
2017 - 2019
- “A Night of Ritual, Performance & Body Art”. Berlin, Germany.
- “The Luminarium Aeternus Project”, at Titanen Piercing Atelier. Berlin, Germany*
- “When the Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, at Mobile Kino Camp. Brandenburg, Germany. (Performance)
- “The Witch Within”, at Berlin Feminist Film Week. Berlin. (Performance)
- Collective Exhibition after 19S earthquake. Coordenada Azul, public space gallery from Universidad La Salle. Mexico City. (Photo exhibition)
- Heal Her Festival, at Casa Viva. Mexico City. (Installation)
- “Simetría”, at Metro Station Candelaria. Mexico City. (Photo exhibition. Project by Fundación Jorge Marin)
- “Simetría”, at Insituto Cervantes. Berlin, Germany. (Photo exhibition. Project by Fundación Jorge Marin)
- Documental photography of theater workshops with teenagers in the mountains of Mexico. Casa Borda, Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico. (Photo exhibition) *
- “The Luminarium Aeternus Project”, Swampfest Berlin. Germany. (Photo exhibition)
- “Purify”, at “HAEMA”, Gelegenheiten. Berlin, Germany. (Performance)
2010 – 2016
- “El erotismo del dolor” (The Eroticism of Pain), at Anual Psychology Seminar of University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. (Photo exhibition)
- No Title, at Rusty Pigfoot Tattoo, Berlin. (Photo exhibition)*
- Succuba, at FERATUM Horror, Fantasy & Sci-Fi Film Festival, Michoacan, Mexico. (Photo exhibition)
- No title, at Plumero Galeria, Mexico City. (Photo exhibition)
- No Title, at Onirico Galeria y Taller, Mexico City. (Photo exhibition)
- No title, at Escuela Activa de Fotografía, Mexico City. (Photo exhibition)
Features
2017 – 2018
- Periódico Reforma, Mexico City
- El Sol de México, Mexico City
- Hot Book, Mexico City
- VICE
2010 – 2016
- Photo Vogue Italy
- Skin Magazine, UK
- Eccentric Edge Magazine
- Spleen! Journal, Mexico