Non-binary, Brooklyn-based visual artist Naomi Friedman works through the mediums of collage and mixed media art. After graduating Cum Laude from Vassar College, with a BA in sociology and prison studies, Friedman co-founded Boyz With Apple—a trans-led, interdisciplinary artist collective dedicated to producing maximalist theater and mixed media art in 2022. The collective offers community arts programming in Brooklyn, from live figure drawing sessions to children’s art’s programming.

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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 achieving trans gender euphoria, and non-binary identity specifically, demands a courageous reconfiguration—growing, stretching, reaching, and letting go—of our sense of self, collage allows for the fantastical reimagination 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. Friedman asks audiences to bear witness to trans life—not as something tolerable, but as something divine. 

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Recent exhibitions include: Cannes Contemporary Art Biennale PAKS gallery, “Interconnecting Lines” with Artio Gallery in NYC, Clio Art Fair, and their first solo exhibition—Passing Through—with Espacio Triple in Madrid, October 2025. After completing an honors residency with the Arquetopia Foundation, Friedman is showing work at the Bucharest miniCollage Biennale in October 2026, and preparing works to exhibit at B2 Atelier London, as a part of the inaugural season for Artio Gallery’s new Chelsea gallery in Spring 2027.