About Zari Harat

Discovery

My name is Zari Harat, and I have studied visual art and art education in Chicago, USA, as well as in Bombay and Cochin, India, and in Paris and Berlin.

Although my chosen place of residency has been Berlin since 1981, I have lived in Hamburg, since 2010, with a three-year break to San Francisco in 1986. My work reflects my travels, cultural exchanges, and adventures. Additionally, I have participated in a variety of group and solo shows of my work.

Currently, my work is mixed media on paper. Before the Corona lockdown, I worked on canvas using primarily acrylics or mixed media. Now, I am rediscovering paper, all types of paper, and sometimes my encounters with print and illustration are visible. The materials that I choose are usually various sizes of paper, ink, gouache, pastels, chalks, oil, water, wax, watercolours, and other pigments. There are stories in my paintings and I am a visual storyteller. There are many questions that emerge, which can be evident in the titles of my pieces.

The topics I engage in are mostly inclusivity, mutual acceptance, respect for others, as well as allowing my ever-emerging language of imagery to merge and emerge. Travel and art residencies come and go, as well as life as a mother, an immigrant, a healing student, and a ceaseless learner, are my visual nutrition.

Artist Statement - Zari Harat

My practice is an act of visual cartography, mapping the intersections of lived experience, memory, and social engagement. I approach painting as a means of deciphering the world, translating the frictions of human encounter into a language of visibility and belonging. My work weaves a narrative of inclusivity, seeking the shared human ground that exists beneath the surface of cultural and ideological conflict.

This search for commonality is rooted in a life of cultural multiplicity. Raised across different continents and traditions, I developed an early awareness of the nuances of identity. This background has led me to a lifelong quest: to look past the differences that separate us and instead uncover our fundamental similarities. I create my paintings as a form of personal and collective healing, a way to process the complexities of our history and transform them into a shared visual language that prioritizes connection over division.

A cornerstone of this research is the exploration of female eroticism, which I redefine as a primal, universal force. To me, eroticism represents the precise equilibrium between power and vulnerability. It is a reservoir of emotional strength, rooted in the body’s capacity to feel, give birth, and heal, that allows for a coexistence of masculine and feminine energies. By embracing this vulnerability, my work challenges traditional structures of suppression and invites a profound connection to our inner emotional landscapes.

To reach this conceptual depth, my creative process is deeply physical; I paint with both hands, engaging my entire body to translate rhythm and intuition directly onto the surface. I work with fluid mediums, ink, fountain pen, gouache, and self-mixed pigments, alongside rigorous printmaking techniques. Within this process, color and music are structural necessities; they dictate the tempo of my gestures and define the atmospheric depth of each piece.

The energy of the studio begins in my everyday life. I carry sketchbooks as a constant companion, capturing impressions, dreams, and fleeting sensations in real-time. In the studio, these "charged" moments undergo a process of decomposition and reconstruction. I break down complex feelings of our shared experience and reassemble them into paintings that function as a common ground where we can see one another and reconnect.

Ultimately, I view my practice as a continuation of a healing tradition, using abstraction to create a "discourse at eye level" (auf Augenhöhe). My paintings are invitations to participate in a journey of recognition and forgiveness. I seek to contribute to a world that is fundamentally connected, transforming individual stories into a shared, inclusive human fabric.