Zara Julius is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Johannesburg. Her practice is informed by her working methodology of “rapture”; asking how we might take seriously Black cultural innovation, fugitivity and performativity as sites of possibility in contexts of enduring extractivist logics. Her work involves the collection, selection, and creation of (contested) archives (real, imagined and embodied) through extensive research projects. She is especially engaged in thinking through the archive, performativity, the death-life matrix, and the internal workings of the Black sonic, and how they may help us reconstitute Time, memory, affect, and History in the face of various unfreedoms and landlessness. She works primarily in sound, performance installation, image-based installation, assemblage and social practice; often collaborating with musicians and cultural workers. She is currently in the process of developing her first work for stage. Zara holds a BSocSci in social anthropology and visual & art history (2013), and a BAHons in social anthropology from the University of Cape Town (2014) and a MAFA in Fine Art by Research and Practice from the University of the Witwatersrand (2021).
