Naomi Friedman is a non-binary Brooklyn-based visual artist working through the mediums of collage and mixed media art. Friedman graduated Cum Laude from Vassar College in 2022 and co-founded the Boyz With Apple artist collective the same year. They are currently in residence with the Arquetopia Honors Lab, and exhibits work globally. Recent exhibitions include “Interconnecting Lines” with ARTIO gallery in New York. Friedman was the recipient of the 2024 International Prize Botticelli for Artistic Merit and, more recently, has been nominated for the 2025 Artist of the Year award—curated by Dr. Salvatore Russo and Dr. Francesco Russo at the Effeto Arte Foundation in Florence. Upcoming shows include “Art Basel Miami” with RedDot, and touring 4 new works in Milan, Florence and Rome with Flyer Art Gallery in the new year.

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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.