Zulu Padilla is a Colombian-born artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in residencies, publications, and exhibitions across Colombia and the U.S., including the 40th Salón Nacional de Artistas, Salón Nacional de Arte BBVA, Galería Santa Fe/Sala Alterna (Bogotá), Museo del Caribe (Barranquilla), BHQFU (New York), Spring/Break Art Show (New York), SoMad Art Space (New York), and Street Road Artists Space (Pennsylvania).
He has been awarded the Immigrant Artist Grant by the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grant for his project Everything is Migrating.
Zulu is part of the new MFA cohort at Brooklyn College, beginning in Fall 2025.
Statement
One morning, on-my-way-home / leaving-home, on a Jetblue JFK- Cartagena flight I read in the Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Nuns) “ If you’re going to tell yourself a story, why not tell a story of freedom”? Chills ran through me, sensations of freedom were aligned with a beautiful sense of understanding. I said to my self: my “self” if I have to choose between making sense and the sensation of freedom right now, I choose the sensation of freedom. Then my mind told me “Wait! you selfish knucklehead, thinking only in your comfortable idea of freedom, what about everyone else? What about the freedom of all beings”? My ‘Self’ : “Who said you and I and all beings were separated”? Up In the clouds, contemplating the blue vastness of the Caribbean sea, with my eyes full of tears , I said to my self, “ This is a story of non-dual experiences”.
When my thoughts drifted back to Earth, the ‘why’ was staring at me, why these stories, why my art practices, why my back and forth, why my non-duality, why cultivate this capacity. The answer flows like the water of the Magdalena River, and I see myself holding the delta, not to arrive at an answer but rather to explode, dissolve all concretized limited answers and dream in the most radical level of freedom.