Prof Josip Zanki, PhD, (Zadar, 1969) is a Croatian visual artist, cultural anthropologist and a university professor. He graduated in 1994 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of Professor Miroslav Šutej, and obtained his doctorate in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in 2016 from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.

Since 1986, he has been active in the fields of printmaking, film, video, installation and performance, intertwining contemporary art with traditional culture, spirituality and spatial research within his work. He has led the art workshops Mountains and Back to Heritage, dedicated to exploring heritage frameworks through contemporary artistic practice. Today, he teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb.

Mirila occupy a special place in his artistic and research work. In 2002, he presented the cycle Mirila during a solo exhibition at the Mimara Museum in Zagreb. He has also explored the phenomenon of mirila through the medium of performance art, and his performances are documented in the 2009 book Mirila: Performance Documentation 2001–2008.

His engagement with mirila has spanned various artistic media, from printmaking and performance to the animated film Mirila. In this way, he has transposed the traditional funerary custom of Velebit into the realm of contemporary art, opening it up to new interpretations.