The Conservatory

For The Conservatory, Okubo presents her ongoing Collector series, exploring the human desire to know and collect. Rooted in curiosity and a longing to understand the world, collecting also carries an impulse to possess, categorize, and contain. Okubo considers the tension between these instincts—between fascination and control.

Her paintings bring together figures, flora, objects, and intricate patterns within densely constructed compositions. As imagery accumulates across their surfaces, distinctions between ornament and object, observation and possession begin to blur, extending the questions of the Collector series into the visual language of the works themselves.

The Artist

Naomi Okubo is a Tokyo-based artist whose work is held in the collections of Hallands Konstmuseum in Sweden and the Jean Pigozzi Collection of Contemporary Japanese Art. A recipient of the Tokyo Wonder Wall Award, she has received support from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation, and has exhibited internationally in Japan, the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Europe. Following solo exhibitions in New York in 2024 and 2025, The Conservatory marks Okubo’s first solo exhibition in Canada.