Zora Dyer

Biography

Zora Eve Dyer (b. 2002) is an Afrogerman and indigenous artist born in Brooklyn, NY, moving to Belgium in 2010 and living in Bonn, Germany since 2015. She primarily focuses on drawing, painting, and creative writing but has found pleasure in experimenting with other mediums such as sculpture, bookmaking, and photography. Zora has a Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is currently in her second year of the MFA program at the SMFA Boston. Zora’s art centers around BIPOC, queer, neurodivergent, chronically, and mentally ill identity and community as well as its relation to nature as a safe haven or spiritual refuge – a space of healing - for those marginalized or deemed less valuable by normative society, and therefore all the more powerful.

Artist Statement

In an increasingly individualistic and productivity-based society, I have found myself less and less able to relate to people. Where my body has been given certain limitations, my mind has found infinite self-preservation methods that aided me through childhood and seek to be healed in adulthood.

My art primarily focuses on drawing and painting, as well as sculptural works that aim to allow the regulation of a mind continuously disturbed. I have found that nature can be a place of refuge; a nonjudgemental space to quiet ruminations; a location to heal and be healed. I find myself accompanied by my inner child in the wild, with the absence of other people or norms, I am able to come into myself and feel present. I enjoy digging for clay and jumping in puddles and discovering how I enjoy myself when I am alone, and only the wind laughs at my jokes.

My art often captures transitional and metamorphic moments, emerging from a dissociative state to that of a meditative presence. There is an absence of tension and an abundance of symbiosis that has been taken for granted, which I try to capture in my work. It acts as both observation and participation of one’s environment and oneself and the inextricable interconnectedness of this organic relationship. To incur damage, heal, and continue to grow with your head held high are one of the many things I have learned through trying to capture nature’s antics in my drawing and painting practice.

Please join me in this sanctuary I have drawn or sculpted around my being as protection; taking a moment to breathe deeply, thrice; and allowing yourself to be present even just for a moment; letting gratitude and pain and responsibility coexist without pushing them away or taking them for granted. The world would be less ugly and scary if we took the time to appreciate the natural beauty that exists around and within us, as well as the wholeness we may find in our environments and communities. We need to be present to make change, but we must also realize that some things – even if they are in essence everchanging - are already whole and perfect just as they are

Instagram: @art_lair_by_z