Naomi Johnson
she/they
Chicago, IL, USA
Naomi Johnson is an artist & researcher based in Chicago, IL. Through metalsmithing, they explore themes of queerness, belonging, kinship, & cultural (il)legibility at the intersections of race, gender, & sexuality. They started their handmade small batch jewelry business, Metal Petal Jewelry, in February of 2023. Through it, they design and sell ready-to-wear and custom pieces. They also design art objects for display and exhibition. Naomi is influenced by traditional African metalwork and craftsmanship as well as contemporary American jewelry styles. In addition to their creative practice they co-lead Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and are invested in reducing the harms of the legal system.
“I make adornments & symbols out of metal as a way to expresses elusive feelings and aesthetics tied to my Black queer identity. I explore the experiences and parts of me that make me feel perplexed, ashamed, or uncomfortable as a way to make meaning out of the experiences I most want to push away. My work explores themes of queerness, belonging, kinship, & cultural (il)legibility at the intersections of race, gender, & sexuality. Black and queer futurity are cornerstones of my design practice as I pull from past and contemporary influences to imagine adornments for people like me.”
How does your work relate to the theme connection?
“Familiar Outsider is a symbol that represents my feelings of dis/connection from African culture as an African American. It takes inspiration from West African art and symbols as well as contemporary jewelry. The result is a form that is divergent from– yet related to– these two aesthetics; a representation of my outsider status with relation to West African culture and still my connection to it as an African American. Even in disconnection, beauty is formed, strange as it may be.
Familiar Outsider is an effort to re-establish connection that has been severed. When connection is absent it feels like weird voids of missing information that you can only know the edge of – evoked in the negative space in this piece.
This piece uses disconnection as a basis for questioning what connection is. Is it shared culture? Values, practices, experiences, aesthetics, language? How can it be built and erased? How do our family and personal histories lead to dis/connection? What do we become without it?"
"Familiar Outsider", Sterling silver, hemp cord, 2.8" x 12.4", 2024
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Francely Flores
What role does connection play in your creative process?
“Connection, and more specifically, the concept of belonging is a central influence to my creative process. In my art practice, I work to establish connection by doing research into West African traditional jewelry, metalwork, and art while also exploring my own experiences as a Black queer person living in the U.S."
"My queerness helps me to connect authentically as I am. By embracing my queerness, I have more comfort and acceptance of myself which helps me connect with other people. My queerness helps me recognize beauty and authenticity whether that be in nature (always nature), people, or relationships, seeing beyond societal beauty standards and accepted aesthetics and seeing beauty in the bizarre, unseemly, and unconventional."
What connection(s) does your queerness make to the world around you?
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Simon Leung
[queerphoria]v4 @ ECU Symposium
