Artist statement

Zaida Oenema creates dynamic yet contemplative reliefs on paper. Drawn, cut, burned, and folded—her body of work features meticulous abstractions of ephemerality in nature.

Using graphite and watercolor, scalpel and soldering iron, the Dutch/Finnish artist renders work on the border of two-dimensional and three-dimensional. With extreme eye-hand precision, Oenema meticulously sculpts line and surface through the rhythmic action of incision and repetition. Emphatically, her process is marked by the rigor of human touch rather than mechanical construct. Working with recurrent forms—burned circles of suns, incensed blades of grass, cut saw-tooth waves—her picture plane is at once orderly and dynamic. As such, the surface changes with the interplay of material, texture and its response to light.

The grid is a foundational element for Oenema, providing a framework for both order and freehand drawing with her tools. She sees her work as a silent composition, with a continuous, harmonious structure. “I need to be hyper-focused to make my work. To do this, I must look for moments of stillness as a time of rest in the image plane. My eyes must be able to wander or scan the surface as if I am looking for a horizon that is not there, as a concentrated way of observing.” Much like gazing upon the sea, Oenema aspires her work to be experienced as a unified whole, akin to the mutable nature of water, transformed by tides and fractured by light. “If I can look at my work like I look at the sea, I am satisfied. If unity predominates and my eyes can wander smoothly over the surface, then the work is in balance for me.”