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Visual Artist, Film & New Media Maker

As a visual artist who primarily uses film and video in experimental and documentary based work, my practice includes performance, multimedia, and digital installation. I embrace complex notions of intertextuality while promoting an active and engaged audience. Thematically, my work deconstructs and interrogates formal conventions, ideologies, and perceptions through a critical juxtaposition of image, space, time, and sound.

 

My intersectionality informs the inspiration for my work, which focuses on the exploration of identity through the multifaceted lens of human experience.  As a media and Africana studies scholar, academia is often at the cornerstone of my pursuits as it provides the intellectual foundation for my creative works. My specialization is primarily devoted to discovering, promoting, and highlighting humanity and artistic influence throughout the African diaspora. My work is designed to promote awareness of personal and universal interconnectivity through visual representation. 

 

The content of my work evolves around the creation and exploration of the black aesthetic as found throughout the diaspora.  I immerse image and sound to produce imagery that is often visually stunning and simultaneously jarring to the senses.  This stylized aesthetic serves as a background or canvas for the presentation of oppositional social, political, and revolutionary themes.

 

As a visual artist, I design immersive spaces for a participatory exhibition that encourages audiences to transform from passive spectator to critical and active agent in the experience. As an activist, my work is dedicated to the pursuit and creation of a modern imperfect cinema capable of transforming the artifice of film and digital video into a revolutionary tool for social change.

 

I am committed to collaborative storytelling that promotes awareness and higher consciousness regarding social and political issues affecting marginalized communities.  My mission is to enlighten, empower, and bring voice to these communities through visual representation.

Zana Sanders

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