"I have always tried to show the new things that I do, an innovative theme, here in Cuba first, and then take it elsewhere, because I don’t like repeating things. I have always liked to exhibit here first so that people can go on seeing what I am doing."

Since her irruption into the Cuban contemporary visual arts, Zaida has revealed her exceptional gifts as a draughtswoman. From her early works she has demonstrated skill and grace and the presence of women in surprising and experimental forms.

Recurrently interviewed, she has equally gone about revealing herself off her canvases, engravings, murals and even dance, for her, "white material is an abyss;" "my soul wakes up at the precise moment when the day and night meet," or "I like undefined worlds."

Her paintings, highly detailed (Lines are my medium of expression"), harmonious, imaginative, complex, always trap spectators and arouse the strong emotions that she provokes.

That is the case with her Reinas de corazones, an exhibition – as Zaida says – made in praise of certain women in history. "There are 19 of them at the moment and let’s see how far I go on with others, there wouldn’t be enough walls in the museum to highlight so many outstanding women in history. It isn’t a feminist thing."

She has painted them in black and white and explains why: "It is a stage of my life; at the beginning I worked a lot in black and white, then came many changes in my work. Now I have gone back to black and white. In any event they are spirits that I am convening, they are not in this world, although that doesn’t mean to say that because they are not in it that they don’t have light or color; it’s a way of doing things. It is a distinct moment, a change, that will not come back any more – as is known with my work – who knows how the next one will come out."

"She has been working on this project for some three years, "reading the stories around them, but gestating the idea it has really been longer, although I continued doing other things."

Someone wants to know the ones she feels closest to and with her spontaneous laugh, almost resounding in the silence of the Fine Arts, she affirms: "I feel close to all of them and all of those who are here as well. I don’t have any special predilection and there are many missing, but there is isn’t enough time or walls, like Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana. I had to choose. I painted them in the order that they appeared in my mind. I didn’t make a list first and set to work. They appeared as they wished."

Also included, like a queen, is her woman-peacock. "Yes, the woman-peacock is still here, she is one more bird, she is within birds, but this is a total change in my work; a 180-degree turn, given that they are portraits. To date I have always made imaginary beings, and these are psychological portraits of characters, trying to come close to them; me, who is not a portrait painter and who never stood out in that field."