Bio

Naoe Suzuki is a visual artist born in Tokyo, Japan and lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. Her work emphasizes interconnectedness of our world through the use of archives, maps, plants, and language. Naoe works with drawing, video, installation, and photography to explore our relationships with water, the legacy of colonialism to our environment and ecosystems, interspecies relationships, and impacts of climate crisis.

Working with various methods and often labor-intensive and slow processes such as anthotype photography or tracing historical maps, Naoe addresses how human histories are deeply intertwined with the present—in both ecosystems and the world power structures.

Naoe was awarded grants from Massachusetts Cultural Council (2022, 2006 & 2001,) Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Puffin Foundation (2023 & 2013), and Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (2013 & 2004.) Her residency fellowships include Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Blue Mountain Center, MacDowell, Millay Colony for the Arts, Jentel, Studios at MASS MoCA, and Tokyo Wonder Site in Japan. Suzuki was an Artist-in-Residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2016–2017. She received an MFA in Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1997.

She has shown her work at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Dorsky Gallery, Lesley University of Art and Design, Susquehanna University, Suffolk University Gallery, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, Burlington City Arts Center, California State University Fullerton, Simmons College and among others.

Naoe lives and creates work in Waltham, Massachusetts, located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, where the land has been inhibited and cared for by the Massachusett Tribe for thousands of years.