About

Zoë Naoumoff is a versatile artist from Merritt Island, FL whose work is influenced by her exploration of the intersection of the mystic body and natural landscapes. Using the surreal as a critical lens with references to her own experiences growing up in coastal Florida, Zoë works with a variety of media to draw connections between femininity, myth and magic in everyday life, and a yearning desire to reconnect the ego with nature.

Especially inspired by the ebb and flow of water and weather which defines her island hometown, Zoë invokes fluidity as an introspective state to moor the body and mind. Many of Zoë’s works are directly inspired by photos collected as part of an observational practice in “finding magic in the everyday”; her quintessential feminine worldview. During artistic implementation Zoë works on compositions in a meditative state, intuitively working and reworking as part of a conversation between her own ego and a mystic connection to everyday landscapes.

Zoë is deeply inspired by contemporary artists such as Wangechi Mutu, who similarly explores the relationship between surreal self-perceptions of femininity and nature, and Fuco Ueda, who uses nature and the feminine figure to portray unsettling narratives of anxiety and isolation. Like these artists, Zoë’s work seeks to transform the viewers’ perceptions of femininity with an unrelenting favor for the natural world and the spirituality it inherently contains.

Bringing together these elements in artistic practice, Zoë’s work seeks to provoke exploration of the feminine relationship to nature in a cultural society which continues to distinguish itself as separate from the natural world.

Zoë Naoumoff

French-American

born in 2000, currently lives and works in Hawaii

Education

BFA in Studio Art, University of Florida, May 2023

Selected Group Exhibitions

2023

Precious Objects, Gainesville Fine Arts Association Gallery, Gainesville, FL

“@” - D.A.M.N.’s 4th Annual Exhibition, 4Most Gallery, Gainesville, FL

LAiZY: Experiments in ARTificial Intelligence, Grinter Hall Gallery, Gainesville, FL

2022

Sketchbook Arts Showcase, FAC Gallery, Gainesville, FL

Awards

2019

Cape Canaveral Juried Art Show, First Place Winner

2018

Columbia University Summer Program Art Contest, First Place Winner

2017

United States Congressional Art Competition, Honorary Award