Zabo Chabiland (b. 1968) is a French visual artist working in the fields of contemporary photography, video and sound performance.
She has lived and worked in New York (1986-2003), Paris (1980-1986 & 2003-2005), Berlin (2003-2021) and is currently based in
the Loire Valley.
She graduated from the full time general studies program at the International Center of Photography in New York (1988).
Her artistic process is inextricably linked to her personal history. Growing up in a creative environment, she learned early on to build bridges between different mediums. During long periods of experimentation, she confronted photography with fabric, non photographic supports and X-ray film, following her personal path and pace through series questioning the notion and the codes of portraiture, the “positive” and “negative” rendering,
the boarders between the visible and the invisible. She developed over time a consistent body of work composed of series that all flow from each other and mobilise the gaze of the viewer, the scotopic vision or its understanding of portraiture or landscape (“calm violence”, “anonymous portraits of identity”, “permeable and variable”, “profiling watermarks”, “anatoms”, “neuzusammensetzung”). In parallel, she developed another body of work driven by moving images and sound performances, involving numerous collaborators, through chance encounters (“sleeping odyssey”, “DDR-DPRK trägheit”, “piano stripes”, “elbow in C”).
Her first vinyl "Watewah-Sleeping Odyssey" was released in 2020 on the label "Grautag records".
She is currently working on a project (Anatoms sonores) that combines both, photography and sound with an edition of vinyl pressed on X-ray film.