Zarah Cabañas

I am drawn to the ways energy shifts spaces and relationships between people. There is a wild universe in the spaces between words, in the sounds that connect us, and in the gaze between two lovers. I explore this charged terrain through the senses. The intricacies of love and desire have obsessed me for as long as I can remember: how a single moment can reshape our understanding of existence, and the absurd ways we behave in our attempts to connect.

My work has primarily taken the form of video art. I create alchemical worlds of ephemeral textures, tuned to my mischievous and sensual nature and anchored by my background in 1990s broadcast-studio aesthetics. Performing live in arenas and concert halls around the world as VJ Lady Firefly has taught me that, regardless of scale, lasting connection begins with the creation of intimacy. Drawing on my understanding of music and image, I build shared experiences that are ephemeral, immersive, and euphoric.

Music and poetry are at the center of my practice. Words emerge; melodies come and go. After working this way for many years, I have come to recognize music and poetry as my most immediate points of entry into the collective unconscious - the streams of emotion, memory, and thought that move through and between us. They are the hum of my practice and a source of its sensuality. I experience them physically through rhythm, vibration, atmosphere, memory, and desire.

Nature offers another portal into this embodied awareness. My study of Filipino martial arts has also become part of my creative inquiry, sharpening my attention to movement, discipline, proximity, and the body's relationship to space. These practices reflect my attraction to edges: unusual places, blurred distinctions, and the tension between instinct and rigor. Perhaps this is why my work often thrives outside traditional artistic spaces.

Increasingly, I am exploring intimacy more directly. Where I once circled around it, I now approach the body as an instrument of perception and connection - a vehicle for attraction, anticipation, vulnerability, and the charged experience of being seen. My work lives in the tension between the profound and the ridiculous, the erotic and the ephemeral, the intimate and the unknowable.