About the Artist
Zaneta is a Filipinx interdisciplinary sound artist, nature recordist, and medium whose work deepens community relationships with local wilderness through the reciprocal and sacred practices of listening and sounding.
Drawing inspiration from their lola sa tuhód (great-grandmother) and her work as a hilot healer in Iloilo, Philippines, Zaneta collaborates with land in multi-modal ways, weaving hyper-local field recordings, environmental studies, and activism, with sound art, storytelling, community art, painting, ritual, percussion, and vocal channeling, to create experiences of deep communion with the more-than-human world.
Their work examines how listening and sounding, as inherently relational and reciprocal experiences, are essential eco-social practices that not only raise awareness of our close connections to non-human kin, but cultivate a unique sense of empathy and interconnectedness that is foundational to stewardship, and ultimately plays a vital role in environmental futures.
Zaneta’s work has been presented in spaces such as the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, and featured on WKNY Radio Kingston, and Wave Farm Radio. Their past projects Sacred Seasons (2020) and Where Land Meets Sky: Geophonic Transmissions for the Body (2022), were awarded the Brooklyn Arts Council grants, and they were a 2025 Strange Foundation Artist in Residence. In 2026 their project, How to Befriend a Mountain was awarded the Arts Alive Grant through Arts Westchester.
Zaneta currently serves as the environmental artist-in-residence at Marydell Faith and Life Center at Hook Mountain in Nyack, NY. They also teach field recording, listening, and land communing workshops in the Hudson Valley.
Their upcoming album, Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods, was created in partnership with the Woodstock Land Conservancy and will be premiering at the historic Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, September 25, 2026. To follow their work, visit @soundartmagic on Instagram.