Juan F. Salazar Sutil
Advisory Team
Juan Francisco Salazar was born in Santiago, Chile, and migrated to Sydney in 1998. He is an interdisciplinary researcher, author and documentary filmmaker whose academic and creative work explore the coupled dynamics of social-ecological change and is underpinned by a collaborative ethos across the arts, science and activism. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2020-2024) with a project on critical social studies of outer space that continues his decade long cultural research on Antarctica. During this work in Antarctica (2010-2020), he led the Antarctic Cities project, with a team of 15 researchers in five countries and co-founded the international Antarctic Youth Coalition in 2020.
Juan has led participatory projects in Western Sydney; Central Australia; Northern Chile; Colombia and Vanuatu and developed collaborations with organizations including: The Australian Museum, The Powerhouse Museum, The Biennale of Sydney, Arts + Cultural Exchange, Proboscis Studio (UK), Live & Learn (Vanuatu), and INACH (Instituto Antártico Chileno). His films and video installations include: Anatomia Monumental (1999), De la Tierra a la Pantalla (2004); 33˚South (with Sarah Waterson, 2008); Nightfall on Gaia (2015) and The Bamboo Bridge (with Katherine Gibson, 2019) and Cosmographies (2024). They have screened at prestigious venues and festivals including Serpentine Galleries (London 2022); Biennale of Sydney (2022); London International Documentary Film Festival (2021); Vision du Reel (Nyon 2020); CPHDOX (Copenhagen 2015); Antenna Film Festival (Sydney 2015 and 2019); Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (Sydney 2008); Museo de las Americas (Denver 2005); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago 1999).
He is a member of the editorial board of the journals Public Humanities, The Polar Journal, Media+Environment and Cultural Anthropology. His work has appeared on The Sydney Review of Books, The Conversation, The New Matilda, The Miami Rail.