Zekarias Musele Thompson

Lives and works in Oakland, CA, USA

Artist statement

Since I came to understand myself as an artist in 2016 my work has revolved around deep listening. My practice engages spatial facilitation to observe the conception, and materialization of the individual and the collective. As an individual, I’m particularly interested in representations of thought as form. I often use the breath, the saxophone, and oil painting to represent the spontaneous creative act. My work has often revolved around two polarities. On one end, my research has focused on unveiling the contemporary manifestations of Eurocentric (and Euro-American) colonial logics in our ecologies, institutions, and identity narratives. On the other, engaging the principles of phenomenological reduction to produce waveform patterns (in the sound and visual spectrum) centered in the present experience of the body-mind complex, in an attempt to relinquish the patterns of cultural formation. My formal interests lay in the dissipation of the image and the idea of a stable subject, landscapes, repetition, polyrhythms, and emergent composition. As a community member, I’m curious about the possibilities of agency through collaborative group process and equitable organization. I’ve hosted weekly gatherings for working on creative practice, facilitated large group improvisational ensembles, and co founded an arts organization to explore these curiosities.

Artwork