Naomi White is an intersectional feminist artist and educator whose work explores art as a healing modality through photography and collage. Her mixed-media practice incorporates original and found photographs, archival glue, wax, and often fire and ash—materials she uses to excavate the past and ignite new possibilities. Through her art, White engages with pressing contemporary issues, often through scientific or photographic metaphors, examining the role of photography in forming unethical perspectives. Her work challenges viewers to reimagine a world beyond racist, capitalist systems of exploitation, and toward one rooted in equity, collective voice, and care for all people, animals, and the planet.
White is the recent winner of The 2024 Associate's Award at Brand52 and was a finalist for the 2023 Hopper Prize. In an interview for Red Canary Magazine Map Of Our Illusions, she discusses her recent project Landscapes of Illusions and Possibilities, with Alicia Pilar and Beth Davila Waldman, and the way she incorporated Octavia Butler's archive, eco feminism, and animal advocacy into her work.
White has exhibited throughout North America and Europe, including art fairs Tryst, Scope, Spectrum, Kolajfest, and Photo LA. Her work has been published in Aedra Art, Collé, Cut Me Up, FAYN, PDN, The Brooklyn Rail, and Uncertain States. White has shared artist talks at the New Orleans Museum of Art, California State University San Bernardino, the Center for Ethics at Cal Poly Pomona, and UCLA.
Teaching is an essential part of White's practice. She teaches classes exploring Lighting for Personal Projects, The Art of Collage, The Archive, Technology and Instagram; Ecology, Ethics & Activism; Photographic Theory; Dreaming in Collage, and The Lighting of Desire and Disgust. White co-curates thesis exhibitions with her students at NYFA (New York Film Academy, Los Angeles) where she is currently Associate Professor of Photography.