artist | researcher
installation, sound & archive

photo by Andile Buka

Zara Julius (b. 1992) is a transdisciplinary artist and creative researcher based in Johannesburg. She works primarily with sound and multimedia installation, print, and social practice; often collaborating with musicians, cultural workers and educators. 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. She is especially engaged in thinking through the archive, 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. Zara has recently released an art book project, A Funeral For…, and is currently in the process of developing her first work for stage of the same title.

Zara holds a BAHons in social anthropology from the University of Cape Town (2014) and a MAFA in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand (2021).  Her training also includes a Documentary Film intensive with Enrique Colina at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television, Cuba (2015), and the Women Opera Makers workshop with opera and theatre director Katie Mitchell at Académie du Festival d’Aix, France (2025). She has been awarded artist residencies in Colombia, Denmark, Austria, South Africa, and most recently she was a guest resident at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands.

Zara has been exhibiting her work internationally since 2017, including installations at Javett Art Centre UP, Pretoria, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Her debut solo exhibition, ‘Whatever You Throw at the Sea...’ opened at the Weltmuseum, Vienna (2023-2024), where she produced a limited edition vinyl release of the same title. Zara is frequently invited to give performances and speak about her practice, including at Simone Leigh’s ‘Loophole of Retreat Venice’ (2022), Skånes konstförening, Malmö (2022), school, Vienna (2023), and PARSE Artistic Research Conference (2023). Zara has developed, scripted and produced two podcast series exploring the intersection of music, history and politics in the Black world; Talking Drum (2021), and Gallo Vault Sessions (2022). She is currently in the group shows ‘In That Same Hour” at Darat al Funun, Amman (2025-2026), and “Unfinished Pasts” at the Wereldmuseum, Amsterdam (2025-2027), where she was an artistic research fellow. Zara’s work has been published in Kunstmagazin PARNASS, PARSE, HERRI, Mail & Guardian, ArtThrob, Springerin, ellipses Journal for Creative Research, and the Funambulist Podcast.