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 thirty years. Zoya has a Master’s 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 Herzegovina and Norway, Zoya began painting full-time in 2000.  Since then, she has participated in international exhibitions across Europe, the USA, Canada and Jamaica and has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair (2019), Caribbean News Service (2015), The Gleaner (Jamaica) (2012) and Arc Magazine (2012).

A book of her paintings, “It Stayed with Me”, with an introduction by Siri Hustvedt, was published in 2022.

“I am a diasporic painter and pull from all the places I have lived. Labels are meant to draw clear lines, but most of us live in the areas between them. I find comfort in that ambiguity and focus on the shifting space where difference and sameness meet.  A recurring theme in my work is being in a state of flux and understanding that this state of “impermanence” is permanent. The language of my art is, in some way, a reflection of the ideas of being uprooted, in transit and in search. I have gained rather than lost from these movements. My connections to and memories of each place are made up of fragments, but that’s exactly what my story is. Hopefully, I am where I am supposed to be. Art does not have to appear political to be political. The political flows from the personal. The personal is political.” 

Zoya is a self-taught painter who enjoys gallery representation in the USA, Canada, Jamaica and Norway.