Today we’d like to introduce you to Zonia.
Hi Zonia , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I moved from Lima, Peru, to Miami, Florida, in my early teens. My mother brought my four siblings and me to what we thought would be a temporary stop, a place we expected to call home for only a few years. More than thirty years later, Miami has remained a constant presence in my life. It is where I attended middle school, high school, and eventually college.
I began college a few years later than many of my peers, but when the time came, I knew I wanted to study art, specifically photography. I immersed myself in that world, balancing work and school while spending as much time as possible in the darkroom or making photographs. During my years at Miami Dade College, I met Joseph Tamargo, who became an important mentor and one of the first people to truly believe in me as an artist. His encouragement gave me the confidence to continue my studies and pursue a BFA at New World School of the Arts.
A year before graduating, I traveled to Europe for the first time. The experience was transformative. I felt an immediate connection to the culture and knew I wanted to spend more time there. I applied for a Fulbright fellowship in photography and was fortunate to receive it. Shortly after graduation, I moved to Madrid. Living in Spain expanded my understanding of life, introducing me to new ways of seeing, thinking, and engaging with the world. The people I met, the pace of life, and the cultural environment left a lasting impression on me.
After Madrid, I made another unexpected decision: I moved to Lima. Having left Peru as a child, I felt a strong need to reconnect with the place where I was born and to better understand that part of myself. What I imagined might be a brief return became a much longer chapter. During my years in Peru, I continued making photographs while also opening and running a café. It was demanding, rewarding, and taught me a great deal about perseverance, community, and responsibility. Although photography remained present in my life, there was little time to fully engage with the images I was creating.
Eventually, I felt ready to return to Miami. This time, however, I came back with a different perspective. Rather than returning to the city I had left, I saw it as an opportunity to begin again. I committed myself to my artistic practice and to exploring new directions within it; the time was now.
Around that time, I began volunteering at the Miami-Dade Public Library and rediscovered my interest in art history. Through that experience, I was introduced to archives, and the connection felt immediate. I returned to graduate school and earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in archives. Today, I manage the Vasari Project, an archive dedicated to documenting Miami’s visual arts history. Working with the collection has allowed me to reconnect with the city where I grew up through a new lens, one shaped by artists, exhibitions, institutions, and cultural memory.
My archival work has unconsciously informed my artistic practice. It has helped me think about images not only as individual objects, but also as carriers of history, memory, and lived experience. This renewed engagement with Miami’s artistic community led me to participate in the Oolite Arts Live.In.Art Residency, an experience that further strengthened my connection to the local art scene. I am also a member of WOPHA, a community that has provided meaningful support and dialogue around photography. In recent years, I have been grateful to exhibit my work in Miami and internationally, continuing a journey that began years ago with a camera, a darkroom, and a growing curiosity about the world around me.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road, though I have yet to meet anyone who says it has been. Moving to a new place and learning how to belong takes time, and I have had to do that four different times. Building a community takes even longer, as does nurturing the friendships and relationships that make a place feel like home.
During my undergraduate years, I was under a great deal of pressure. The job I held at the time was not connected to the arts, which made it difficult to engage with the artistic community in a meaningful way. On the occasions when I did, it often felt as though I was trying to fit into a space that was not yet mine. Looking back, perhaps it simply was not the right moment for me in Miami.
Instead, I crossed an ocean to Madrid and returning to Peru was also challenging. I had left as a child and came back as an adult with the desire to build something from the ground up. At the time, it felt like a leap into the unknown, but it is one I have never regretted. The foundation of the work I create today was shaped by that experience. It taught me to trust intuition and to recognize that there is often something within us quietly guiding us toward the places and experiences we need most.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My projects often emerge from a process of attentive looking; to environments, and to the subtle gestures that hold emotion and history in the everyday. Recently, through the act of embroidering onto the images, I work to introduce a tactile layer that functions both as a mark and as writing visual language through which I trace resonance, energy and time. This gesture transforms the photographic surface into a space of translation, where what is felt becomes visible, and what is unseen finds form. I explore bookmaking and printmaking too, having always a photographic images as a foundation. My practice is deeply informed by movement…migrating between Peru , Spain and the U.S., where I had lived for several years, has made a significant shift in my perception of time and space and how landscapes and personal histories intertwine; and understand how memory resides not only in the body, but in the natural and built environments that surrounds us. I seek to create quiet spaces of reflection, where attention, stillness, and care become ways of reconnecting with the world and with oneself.
I am a photo based artist, I work with images I create and add another layer and try to connect with the viewer.
How do you define success?
Having the opportunity to express and share your thoughts through whatever medium feels most meaningful to you is a privilege. As an artist, success has meant finding my way back to my practice, to create freely, remain curious, and continue exploring the questions that move me. It is through this process of observation, reflection, and discovery that my work takes shape.
While much of my practice unfolds in solitude, I know it is sustained by the support of others. The encouragement of my family and friends gives me the confidence to continue taking risks, asking questions, and pursuing new directions in my work. Even when I am working alone, I carry their presence with me. Their support has been invaluable, and their influence continues to shape how I move through the world and approach my creative practice.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://zoniazena.myportfolio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoniazena/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoniazena/
