Naomi Okubo

Naomi Okubo’s work explores delicate and often uneasy relationships between individuals, society, and the spaces that shape them. Drawing on her personal experiences, particularly her complex relationship with her mother, she examines how guise, decoration, and inherited roles—especially restrictive notions of “femininity”—affect human interactions. In her early work, Okubo depicted women without faces as a symbol of the pressures to conform in Japanese society. Over time, these faceless figures have come to function more broadly as a mirror, allowing viewers to project themselves and reflecting both individual experiences and societal dynamics. In recent years, she has also been exploring the motif of the “greenhouse/home,” a confined yet seemingly nurturing space that resonates with her upbringing and contemporary life, highlighting how environments can both protect and constrain. Her works involve a complex, multi-layered process, where materials and techniques accumulate to convey the depth and contradictions of lived experience. Okubo earned her MFA from Musashino Art University in 2011 and lived in New York from 2017–2019 with grants from the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan and the Yoshino Gypsum Foundation. She has exhibited widely in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., including Fou Gallery, New York (2024/25); GALLERY MoMo, Tokyo (2023); ELSA ART GALLERY, Taipei (2022); and Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation, Tokyo (2022). She served as a residency artist at mh PROJECT, New York (2019); Residency Unlimited, New York (2017); and Art Department of Halland Municipality, Sweden (2014). Her work has been featured by Airbnb Magazine, ZEIT-magazine, Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, Financial Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and a PBS documentary. Bird Collector, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 57 × 44 in. Canary Cave, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 38.2 × 51.3 in. Dancing in the Flames, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 28 × 12.4 in.