UC Berkeley Art Practice
Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley

Zekarias Thompson MFA '25

Photo of Zekarias Thompson

Photograph of Zekarias Thompson

Zekarias Thompson MFA ‘25

Web: www.zekarias.co
Email: zekarias@berkeley.edu

Zekarias Musele Thompson (they) is an artist based in Oakland, CA, and Reykjavik, IS who is interested in humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures and how we bring them into material form. Their practice seeks to create containers that support our ability to navigate emergent psychosomatic responses through deep listening and close attention. Through sonic composition, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, writing, and mark-making, they intervene with entrenched historical narratives around individual and collective self-deception and embodied trauma. Their work implores us to relinquish our attachment to identities rooted in dis-integrated mythologies and unnecessary hierarchies, and invites us to expand our capacity to create sustainable futures through self-observation.

Zekarias has presented work at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Land and Sea, and Eternal Now in the Bay area — as well as Associate Gallery and Open in Reykjavík, Iceland. They have performed and collaborated with artists such as Pétur Eggertsson, Phillip Laurent, Benjamin Rodgers, Ástríður Jónsdóttir, Joshua Wismans, Lonnie Holley, Zachary James Watkins, Claire Fleming Staples, Cory Todd, James Wallace, Miles Lassi, and Jessica Ackerley. Zekarias is an instigator of the Musele Project, a sound, image, performance, and facilitation practice that encourages deep, empathic listening, and a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people.

Installation view of The State of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at...
toner on paper, cork board, push pins; 36.25 x 48.25 inches -2023