Chantal Zakari is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and art educator. In her work she draws upon contemporary social issues by making connections through personal narratives, history and popular culture. Inspired by social phenomena she positions herself in relationship to a public or a sub-culture. Her studio practice freely combines research methodologies and artistic strategies borrowed from various disciplines such as photography, documentary, performance, storytelling, installation, graphic design and social interventions. Her current research is about the social histories of the Federal Arsenal in her hometown of Watertown, MA. Her work unveils the intertwined stories relating to the place and especially the people who worked there and to connect the current urban renewal which is transforming the Arsenal into a mall. 

Zakari has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She has published solo and collaboratively with her partner Mike Mandel several artist’s books; webAffairs (2005), The State of Ata (2010), They Came To Baghdad (2012), Lockdown Archive (2015), Campaign (2018), A Catalog of Flags (2018) and Cogent Message (2019). Her books are in the collection of Yale University, MOMA, Addison Gallery of American Art and many other public and private collections. She has shown her work at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Photographic Resource Center, New York Center for Book Arts, International Center for Photography in NY, FotoFocus in Cincinnati, Fotodoks in Munich among many other venues. She is a member of Kingston Gallery and is currently serving as the director.