Zia Hooker

Lives and works in Detroit, MI, USA

Artist statement

Zia Hooker is an artist with a background in architecture and built spaces. Her work addresses built space and the body, particularly bodies affected by social, childhood, and generational traumatic impacts. She explores dwelling, cities, and boundaries around home or homeland and how these environs receive impact from political and/or social violence. She is also interested in protection and what this means from a micro/person-to-person level into a larger sociopolitical context. As a related theme, she explores skin and psychic space as boundaries. She is fascinated by collective movement and corresponding collective resonation around proximate bodies, and also in how this might serve as a protective energy against potential predatory systems. Her own journey is another important lens. She seeks to express play and playfulness in space and how it has moved her toward a recaptured childhood and self compassion. She has been learning her own somatic wisdom into play, playfulness and joyful space making. From here she hopes to inspire activism geared toward making public spaces "safe to play". Her work draws on theories developed by Bessel van der Kolk M.D., Dr. Peter Levine, and Dr. Stephen Porges and also on Jungian-based theorists and writers such as Marion Woodman and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. More recently the work has turned toward body-based resonance practice as well as interactive dance practices such as Contact Improvisation. Through this exploratory research, she...

Artwork