Artist Statement​
 

Born in Vancouver, B.C. Canada to Jamaican and Canadian parents, early childhood in Germany, raised in Kingston, Jamaica and a resident of Norway for more than twenty years. Zoya has a Masters degree in International Social Work from the University of British Columbia, Canada. After years of teaching at universities, developing community programs and outreach facilities in Jamaica, Canada, Latvia, Bosnia Hercegovina and Norway, Zoya began painting 

full-time in 2000.

 

"My art falls somewhat outside but I guess that is only fitting. I paint the cast of characters which fill the spaces in between. We all have a cast of characters that define our lives. My cast is the cast of the misfit. They are immigrants found between cultures, continents, languages and disciplines.

There is a lot of noise in the silence." 

 

Through paintings which evoke the personal to create a space in which to be political, Zoya’s paintings can be seen as an exploration of the idea of self in "diaspora identity".  Common themes of the diaspora such as alienation, marginality and inclusion, are addressed by referencing "the cast of the misfit"; the "immigrants" found between cultures, languages and disciplines. The idea of how identity is based on something that is predetermined by someone else is challenged by confronting stereotypes, not least those stereotypes originating in corporeal notions of beauty. Through being confronted with figures "in the spaces in- between" the viewer is in a position to acknowledge the strangeness of the familiar and the familiarity of difference.