Zekarias Musele Thompson (b. 1983, Washington, DC) is an artist concerned with humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures—and how we bring them into material form. Utilizing sonic composition, mark-making, performance, photography, collaborative group practice, and writing, their practice creates containers that support our ability to navigate emergent psychosomatic responses through deep listening and close attention. Zekarias lives and works in Oakland, CA, and Reykjavik, IS and received their MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2025. They have presented solo exhibitions and projects at the Museum of the African Diaspora (2024), Gray Area (2024), the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (2024), the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (2024), as well as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and The Lab (2023). They have performed and been in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2025), CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (2024), and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2023) in the Bay area — as well as the Hamraborg Festival (2025), Ásmundasalur (2025), and Open (2022) in Reykjavík, Iceland. They have collaborated with artists such as Oysterknife, Salimatu Amabebe, Eggert Pétursson, Pétur Eggertsson, Laraaji, Phillip Laurent, Lonnie Holley, Zachary James Watkins, Claire Fleming Staples, Miles Lassi, Jessica Ackerley, and many more.
Zekarias facilitates the Togetherness Ensemble, a rotating ensemble convened on occasion to hold space for communal resonance through centering emergent composition. They are also 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. They were an Emerging Artist Program cohort member at the Museum of the African Diaspora in 2024.
