BIOGRAPHY
Non-binary, Brooklyn based visual artist, Naomi Friedman, works mainly through the mediums of analog collage and mixed media art. Through their work with social justice and arts organizations, Friedman works to combine their passion for prison activism, their outspoken advocacy for the queer community internationally, and a commitment to emergent political and artistic praxis. In 2022, Friedman co-founded Boyz With Apple Artist Collective LLC, an opportunity to combine their skills in visual arts with movement and devised physical theatre. Throughout their creative practice, Friedman centers found object art and community testimony, from material collection through creation, in order to interrogate creative processes in our modern Age of Surveillance.
CV
2024. Group Exhibition, Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, New York.
2024. Solo Exhibition, Clio Art Fair, New York.
2024, Awarded International Prize Botticelli, Effeto Arte Foundation, Florence.
2023. Solo Exhibition, Florence Biennale XIV: I am You, Florence.
2023. Group Exhibition, International Kolaj Fest, New Orleans.
2023. Collage residence, The Kolaj Institute, Sanquhar, Scotland.
2023. Artist in residence, Arquetopia Foundation, Naples.
2022. Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, Vassar College, New York.
STATEMENT
In their practice, Friedman explores the line between space and place—using repetition and pattern to play with scale. Inspired by the vibrant colors and whimsical textures of nature, Friedman often works in a warm-toned, primary color palette. Their maximalist style allows them to create intricate narratives, intervening on binaries of genre and medium. In the same way that aspiring to trans gender euphoria demands a courageous reconfiguration—growing, stretching, reaching, and letting go—of our sense of self, collage allows for the fantastical reemergence of seemingly mundane, disconnected images. In Friedman’s work, emergent reimagination defies gravity, bending the laws of space and time in order to question prevailing binaries in society: reason/nature, male/female, guilty/innocent, good/evil.
