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ZACARIA KING

He/Him

Zacaria is a story about growth and the search for Home. His practice has been driven by a desire to build community with people who are deeply connected to music, history, and language expressions that lend themselves to take on various forms. My quest has always been to come together to make creative work that transcends limitations and creates an experience of the work, within the broader community. Zacaria believes that we can push the investigation of the unending invitation into all mediums by burrowing int the boundaries of what we create. He sees this interconnectedness as how we tell our stories.

In process, Zacaria is unearthed, distilled and present with his environment. Primarily he is concerned with finding sacred spaces in which I can learn and build with other Black & Brown kindred who are also seeking liberation. Currently my solo practice is calling out for more intentional and personal development. After many years of building an artistic identity in a cohort setting throughout college; his solo practice has become a projection of the deep collaboration and outward sprawling of connections that engage his more adaptive qualities. I am repurposing this skill for my own personal discovery rather than sequestering it for the benefit of a collective. Since leaving the academic-arts scene in fall of 2018, I have found that an expansiveness lives not only in my artistry but within my entire being. The quest now is to see that this fullness of feeling and life experience is realized in independent projects as well as through future collaborative outfits that extend across themes and disciplines.

Artist Statement:

If I was tasked to coin an epithet for my artistry, I would use the phrase "colorful relationships". My practices are a process of building relationships with the different elements of my being. I see active relationships as a practice in forming trust, gaining familiarity, and understanding uniqueness. This is why I consider color, it allows me to gauge the depth, mood, tone, and skillset which is specific to each relationship. The relationship that I have to playing piano is very different from the one I have developed to the art of Dance. Dance is how I PLAY and engage the world of my Inner Child. I have known dance, in all it's rejoice and sorrow and thrashing. I have, therefore, known my body and it's natural cadence for movement for as long as I can remember. I believe that as we move our bodies we instinctively move from the places where the energy is trapped, from the spaces that hurt. Dance is a search party for where the healing needs to take place. I am learning that while I have a relationship to my body as a complete figure, I am only now beginning to build a conscious relationship to my arms. I am coming into the understanding that my hands, fingers, wrists, forearms, elbows, and shoulders are these isolated and
poetically dexterous parts of the larger whole. The colors of my relationship to dance are often vibrant, deeply saturated, and expansive while the colors of my relationship to piano are currently learning to expand beyond the handful of hues.

My works are committed to learning, growing, and healing via the use of the elements of what I have defined for myself as the 5 Elements of PLAY: Movement, Color, Sound, Space and Imagination as a grounded foundation for opening the storytelling and exploration of any subject. Most recently I have been developing this elemental lens through my exploration of body mapping.

My approach to art, like my gender, is a paradox that moves toward both expansion and
destruction at the same time.


Project Description:

I am most concerned with creating something that people can move through. I create the kind of Art that anchors me in the knowing that Mother Earth, our first ancestor, will supply all that is needed. That the Spirit of Need sends us into the heart and heat of all truth. The concept is just that: using discarded wood (panels, and furniture pieces) as primary canvas, my art work will be left in strategic places around the city in a way that calls forth reflection and postures of love.

I want the use of scrap wood i.e. waste to represent the love which is possible after wars of abandonment. The ability to repurpose, reengage, and reconnect with that we thought was old barren and without use -- this draws me closer to the Earth, especially as my process for collecting materials is consistent with this process of repurposing.

I see the tree as one of God's most magnificent communities; how they have mastered an interdependence that does not compromise the individuality and uniqueness of each strong channel for air cleansing, beauty, and wisdom. All the while, they remain capable of holding a constant communal connection via root systems that can span vast expanses of land. Trees share energy, food, healing modalities, and hold a shared responsibility for the habitat of our existence as humans --- Trees are the ultimate kings of transmutation and wise teachers for the community of the Earth's various environments and beings, which they support.

My use of discarded wood is a nod to the ancient technology of Trees and their magical lives.

My intention is that in my process of allowing these discarded wood pieces to find me as I take daily walks; then painting as a way to transmute the energy/internal rhythms I hold, and finally putting the Art i.e. the Love back out into the city - I will be in progress of building community and thus learning how to reciprocate the constant flow of Love as Trees do.