Zulu Padilla is a Colombian-American interdisciplinary artist and curator working in mixed media and installations. His practice explores the complex relationships between uprootedness, freedom, and beauty as universal experiences. In recent years, his work has been influenced by neotropical bird migration and the notion of queerness.
Zulu's work has been featured in residencies, publications, and exhibitions in both Colombia and the U.S., including the 40th Salón Nacional de Artistas (Bogotá), Salón Nacional de Arte BBVA (Bogotá), Galería Santa Fe (Sala Alterna, Bogotá), Museo del Caribe (Barranquilla), BHQFU (New York), Spring/Break Art Show (New York), and Somad Art Space (New York).
In 2017, he was awarded the Immigrant Artist Grant by the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2022, he received the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grant for his project Everything is Migrating.
Zulu Padilla lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
SoMad Artist Residency
As Mad World’s artist-in-residence, Zulu Padilla presented a multimedia installation that traced the migratory patterns of neotropical birds as observed from cruising spots in Prospect Park. In these secluded pockets of urban wilderness, birds and queer communities converged—unbound by borders, rules, or fixed identities. Padilla’s large-scale photographic collages evoked the layered, transient, and embodied nature of both flight and desire. By intertwining the avian and the human, the work revealed a shared multiplicity: each body, feathered or flesh, carried countless perspectives and ways of being.
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