{"id":108652,"date":"2025-12-01T15:05:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T15:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=108652"},"modified":"2025-12-01T15:05:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T15:05:34","slug":"naomi-fisher-miami-art-basel-grazia-gazette-2025","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/naomi-fisher-miami-art-basel-grazia-gazette-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Discover Artist Naomi Fisher’s Secret Miami Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Naomi Fisher, Pink Flowers,<\/em> 2001
Photo: Courtesy of Naomi Fisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miami-based artist Naomi Fisher transforms South Florida gardens into surreal realms where plants take on lives of their own. Over a 25-year career spanning photography, painting, ceramics, public art, and performance, Fisher has explored the boundary between nature and artifice. Her early-2000s Backyards<\/em> series features women photographed from behind, their bodies merging with surrounding vegetation as orchids or heliconias sprout from their bikini bottoms. More recent projects extend that dialogue between the organic and the constructed: Arecaceae<\/em> (2018), a site-specific mirrored stainless-steel palm installation for Givenchy\u2019s Miami Design District store, transformed a retail space into a reflective jungle, while Luncheon in the Grotto<\/em> (2022), a mural painted for Charli XCX, fills a disco-ball-lit party room with a tropical rainforest inhabited by mermaids. Rootwork: The Botanically Inspired Art of Naomi Fisher<\/em><\/a> at The Kampong National Tropical Garden in Coconut Grove\u2014a mid-career retrospective on view through December 31\u2014 brings these branches of her multifaceted practice together, immersing visitors in uncanny environments where the familiar becomes extraordinary.<\/p>\n

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Naomi Fisher, Encyclia Tampensis (White texture on Blue 1),<\/em> 2025
Photo: Courtesy of Naomi Fisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rootwork<\/em> reconnects Fisher\u2019s art with the garden where her fascination with the plant kingdom first blossomed. Her father worked as a botanist at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, and she often accompanied her parents to parties at The Kampong, the former estate of David Fairchild, a horticultural explorer who helped introduce mangoes and avocados to the Sunshine State. \u201cI have all these memories of going there as a kid and it just being this magical wonderland,\u201d Fisher recalls. For Garden Director Dr. Brian Sidoti, Fisher\u2019s show is deeply grounded in the institution\u2019s history and mission. \u201cThe Kampong\u2019s arts programming highlights the intersection of conservation, community, and contemporary art, transforming the garden into a living space for creative dialogue,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve known Naomi\u2019s family for many years, so it\u2019s especially meaningful to share her work here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Naomi Fisher, #Puzzled,<\/em> 2017
Photo: Courtesy of Naomi Fisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fisher\u2019s practice dances between meticulous botanical detail and playful performance. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking back on my middle school sketchbooks, and they alternate between orchids and hibiscus showing every stamen and pistil, and girls in ballet slippers running from wolves,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m still basically making the same art.\u201d A botanical illustrator colleague of her father\u2019s showed her that pursuing art professionally was possible, and she honed her stippling and crosshatching skills at Miami\u2019s New World School of the Arts\u2014one ninth-grade, hyper-detailed shady lady tree drawing appears in the exhibition\u2014before developing a more conceptual approach at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her participatory sculpture #Puzzled<\/em> (2017), originally commissioned for the Underline and now installed in The Kampong\u2019s heritage tropical fruit collection, invites visitors to dance with its mirrored ballet barres. A local ostentation of peacocks has gleefully taken Fisher up on the offer, preening and strutting before the reflective surfaces.<\/p>\n

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Naomi Fisher, Chromogenic Encyclia Tampensis,<\/em> 2024-25, and Arecaceae Totem,<\/em> 2018
Photo: Courtesy of Naomi Fisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The main part of the show unfolds across The Kampong\u2019s oolitic-limestone welcome center. In the living room, two 2001 cibachromes from Fisher\u2019s Backyards<\/em> series anchor the exhibition, their intensely pigmented, tightly cropped images showing women dressed in floral prints enveloped by cascades of cut blossoms. Nearby, Arecaceae Totem<\/em> and two Arecaceae Fronds,<\/em> repurposed from her Givenchy commission, converse with four new etched aluminum sculptures of the butterfly orchid and bluebell, created over the past two years. Coated in chromodynamic paint, the blossoms catch the light, revealing hidden pink and purple tones. The newest painting, Ylang Ylang Rorschach<\/em> (2025), inspired by a blooming tree on the grounds, radiates the vitality that first drew Fisher to The Kampong. The dining room features ceramics and glassworks depicting palms and carnivorous pitcher plants, while the library presents a grid of watercolors and drawings tracing her process, from direct observation to stylized studies that evolve into motifs for her large-scale sculptures. Rootwork<\/em> draws out Fisher\u2019s consistent strategy of leveraging the allure of botanical art to unify diverse audiences and inspire environmental action. \u201cOver time, I\u2019ve found a softer approach to activism rooted in beauty,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA’<\/em>s\u00a0Miami Gazette<\/a>:<\/h4>\n