Icaro Zorbar

Icaro Zorbar was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1977 and lives and works in Norway. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses installation, sculpture, sound, video, and performance, often bringing together obsolete technologies, found objects, and mechanical devices. Working with record players, cassette players, monitors, speakers, and other forms of outdated equipment, Zorbar transforms these objects into hybrid constructions that occupy a space between artwork, machine, and play. His practice is characterised by an interest in the material and poetic possibilities of technologies whose original functions have become obsolete. Zorbar’s works frequently begin with existing devices that he dismantles, repairs, reconfigures, and combines with other materials. Rather than presenting technology as something neutral or purely functional, he emphasises its physical presence, its vulnerability, and its capacity to accumulate traces of time. His machines often operate imperfectly, producing sounds, movements, images, and unexpected effects that make their mechanisms visible. In this way, technological obsolescence becomes a means of reflecting on memory, decay, repetition, and the passage of time. Sound and the relationship between the human body and mechanical objects are central to his installations. Zorbar creates environments in which visitors encounter machines as animated or almost living entities, often giving them an unusual scale or rearranging their conventional functions. His installations can therefore resemble theatrical scenes or small ecosystems in which obsolete technologies, sounds, images, and found materials interact. The resulting situations combine humour and nostalgia with a sustained interest in human relationships and in the possibilities and limitations of technological invention. Zorbar studied Film and Television and later completed a Master’s degree in Plastic and Visual Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. He subsequently obtained a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Bergen in Norway. His artistic formation in film and visual arts is reflected in a practice that consistently moves between moving image, sound, installation, and sculptural assemblage. His work has been presented extensively in international exhibitions and institutions. In 2019, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá presented *Extrañando al fantasma*, a large-scale installation occupying three floors of the museum and combining kinetic objects with video and sound installations. Earlier projects include *Stay a While, A Swang Song* at Kunsthalle Osnabrück and *HOME* as part of the 14th Biennale de Lyon in 2017. He also participated in the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012 and the 2009 *Younger Than Jesus* exhibition at the New Museum in New York. Zorbar’s work is represented in public collections including Mudam Luxembourg and the Banco de la República Art Collection in Bogotá. Mudam holds *Little by Little, Assisted Installation n°4* (2006), while the Banco de la República collection includes works from his *Suicides* series and the installation *Off – Lejos del lugar en cuestión*. His work is also part of the TBA21 collection, which holds the video installation *Algún día te diremos adiós* (2011). Through his reconstruction and transformation of obsolete technologies, Zorbar develops a practice in which machines become carriers of memory, affect, and human experience. His installations invite viewers to look closely at the mechanisms and materials that surround them, revealing the poetic potential of malfunction, imperfection, obsolescence, and repair. Rather than celebrating technological progress, his work attends to what remains behind: the traces, sounds, and relationships that technologies accumulate as they move through time.