practice statements

Sara Zaltash makes artwork from disciplinary intersections to tell embodied stories. Collaborating charismatically with digital technologies, naturality, community, festivity and im/material artefacts, they seed and nurture new mythopoetic acts. Under the right conditions, these acts blossom as songs, writing, performance and hearsay, and bear fruit heroically as physical and digital experiences and spaces for human and more-than-human individuals and communities, offered in site-specific, durational, scored, aleatoric & participatory forms. 

Beloved Sara Zaltash is a skilled astrologer, spiritual practitioner, spiritual community organiser, temple keeper and public mystic. They live to serve GodS; a pluralistic term that they coined to acknowledge and include all expressions, stories and understandings of the divine. Their intuitive animism mingles with the unstudied Sufism that is written into their blood and bones. By encountering and metabolising the love that pervades all of spiritually alive creation, they hold and share perspectives, stories, ideas and spaces for Oneness with individuals, groups, the collective and the unseen. 

Working musically as Queen Sally, Zaltash sings and plays lyre, sharing original songs and covers that are raw, vital, beckoning and brutal. Imagine Johnny Cash reincarnating as Diamanda Galas, but funnier. Their music is self released to avoid interaction with the commercial music industry. They nurture musical communities by hosting open mic nights. 

In September 2025, Sara Stone-Zaltash began their study and practice of landscape architecture. Scent, swimmable landscapes, amphibian habitats, biomimicry, multispecies placemaking, land-sky storytelling and animist approaches to community consultation are subjects that excite them within the sector. Skills in technical drawing, horticulture and community consultation are developing through study and commissions.

Biography

Born in Reading, UK (1985) to Iranian parents of Islamic heritage, I attained British Citizenship in 1996. My Roman Catholic primary schooling and comprehensive secondary education were followed by a BA Theatre, Film and Television (Bristol, 2008), a Postgraduate Language Certificate in Persian Language and Literature (Tehran, 2010), an MA Performance, Culture, Context (Leeds, 2012), and half a Graduate Diploma in Law (BPP, 2013). I am a graduate of St Ethelburga’s Spiritual Ecology programme (2018) and Spiritual Directors International New Contemplative’s initiative (2019-21). In September 2025, I began to study an MA (Conversion) Landscape Architecture at University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham. I have further certifications and trainings in Sustainability, Cybernetics, Persian Literature, Basic Arabic and Quranic Arabic, Astrology, Grief Tending, Dream Interpretation, Spiritual Ecology, Spiritual Direction, Herbalism, earth-based female-led Judaism, Ancestral Lineage Healing, Horticulture and Counselling Skills. I have sat three 10-day Vipassana courses, and practice yoga and meditation daily. I am a lifelong student of theological, esoteric and mystical practices from multiple traditions and teachers. My greatest teacher is the living wilderness of the sky.

I have performed professionally as an actor and singer under the name Sara Zaltash since 2003, and committed my solo practice to performance and Live Art in 2013. In 2017, I adopted the prefix “Beloved” to recall the Sufic encounter with the Divine, of Allah as the Beloved One, at once vast and intimate. At Pentecost 2023, I was received, through the holy sacrament of baptism as Sally Anne-Marie Hildegard, into the Anglican Communion at Bristol Cathedral. In August 2025, I married Rev Matthew Stone, and presently work within my landscape practice as Sara Stone-Zaltash. 

 I am a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute, Associate Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace and Resident of Pervasive Media Studio.

My work has been supported by the British Council and Arts Council England, among others, and written about by the BBC, ITV, the Guardian, openDemocracy, Haaretz and the New York Times, among many others.