Bio

Naoe Suzuki is a multidisciplinary artist born in Tokyo, Japan and lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. Her multidisciplinary practice includes drawing, installation, photography, video, and text. Drawing on a wide variety of materials and archives ranging from historical maps, ancient medical papyrus, scientific notations, or old notebooks filled with longhand writings, Naoe creates work that offers a new way of seeing these historical layers.
She traces, erases, cuts, or draws on them to create a new space where reinterpreting our past is possible and reimagining our present and future is encouraged. Central to her practice is emphasizing on interconnectedness of our world—with colonialism, past and present, and its impacts on ecosystems and environmental transformation.

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.

Dancing is an important part of her life and she practices Gaga movement language. Naoe has been dancing together with her 89 years old mother and her cousin on Zoom on the daily basis since the pandemic. She enjoys walking by Quinobequin (now known as Charles River) and swimming in Walden Pond during the summer.