About the Artist
Zaneta is an interdisciplinary sound artist and spirit medium whose work addresses climate care from the sacred, internal, and local experience.
Drawing from the work of their lola sa tuhód (great-grandmother) as a hilot healer in Iloilo, Philippines, Zaneta’s work invites communities to explore their personal connection to local wilderness and how we cultivate a relationship of care with our home ecology.
Weaving local field recordings, environmental studies, sound art, community story gathering, ritual, and channeled sound, Zaneta creates experiences of deep communion with the more than human world. Experiences that evolve into deeper explorations of ecological belonging and personal stewardship through ongoing community exchanges between land and people.
Their work also examines how listening and sounding as inherently relational and reciprocal experiences, are essential 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, the Climate Imaginarium on Governor’s Island, and featured on WKNY Radio Kingston.
Their past projects Sacred Seasons (2020) and Where Land Meets Sky: Geophonic Transmissions for the Body (2022), were awarded the Brooklyn Arts Council grants.
Zaneta currently serves as the inaugural, environmental artist-in-residence at Marydell Faith and Life Center at Hook Mountain in Nyack, NY.
Their upcoming project, Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods (2025), was created in partnership with the Woodstock Land Conservancy and in collaboration with the Zena Highwoods, and will be premiering on Wave Farm streaming December 21, 2025.
To learn more about follow them on IG @soundartmagic, or listen to their sound Substack, Moon Pool.
Art Witch and
Readings
Zaneta is the host of the Art Witch podcast, where creativity, magic, and healing align for personal and collective liberation.
On the podcast, they interview artists who weave spiritual practices into their artwork and explore modalities such as ritual, mediumship, magic, and tarot in the creative process.
Past interviews have included Sophie Strand, Amanda Yates-Garcia, Edgar Fabian Frias, Eliza Swann, Maria Minnis, and more.
As a spirit medium, they specialize in reading for creatives of all modalities and levels of experience, helping people to thrive in their soul’s work. Readings combine psychic, mediumship, channeling, and journeying, along with their 33 years as an artist, 20 years as an arts educator, and 12 years in the arts education non-profit world.
Their teachers include the human and more-than-human beings who have deeply influenced their work: Steve Sykes, Eaton Canyon, Hook Mountain, the River that Flows Both Ways, Sugar Maple, their Lola Sa Tuhód Isabella, Starhawk, Lenny Strobel, JL Umipig, Eliza Swann, Mary Oliver, and Willa White.
Percussion and Arts Education
As an intergenerational multi-percussionist, Zaneta’s work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and on national television with Alicia Keys and America’s Got Talent.
In 2016, they served as director of music for Art Slope, a 10-day multi-arts festival in conjunction with Park Slope Civic Council, where they curated over 90 musical performances in over 75 venues including the Brooklyn Public Library and Prospect Park.
They have served as Director of Music Education for Inner Arts Initiative, a Brooklyn-based non-profit that promotes creative empowerment and self-expression for personal and collective well-being through educational and performance programming.
With 20 years experience as an arts educator, Zaneta has facilitated workshops for the Brooklyn Museum, taught for programs such as Girls Inc, Girls Rock Philly, the Leadership Program, and the GO project. They specialize in listening, sound art, percussion, decolonizing music ed, and creative empowerment. Their educational work firmly supports students to self-determine their art and reframe music education through the lens of decolonization, and center authenticity and creative joy.
Their educational writing has appeared in publications such as Tom Tom magazine and cited on NPR.