Zoé Blue M. (b. 1994, Toulon, France) is a Japanese-American artist raised in Los Angeles, where she lives and works. Her practice explores memory, cultural hybridity, historical narrative, and the complexities of identity through vivid, immersive visual worlds. Drawing from her French, Japanese-American, and West Coast American heritage, her paintings merge Eastern and Western traditions, referencing ukiyo-e prints, Noh theater, anime, manga, and hyperpop culture, while examining the psychological and emotional dimensions of femininity, adolescence, and family history.

Her figures oscillate between exuberance and emotional turbulence, rendered with wide, animated eyes, layered patterns, and kaleidoscopic color palettes. Mirrors, reflections, and repeated figures recur throughout her work, evoking dualities of self and gaze, solitude and community, past and present, and suggesting both intimacy and observation. Through these motifs, she explores interior lives alongside the dynamics of communal experience. Her works are simultaneously playful and unsettling, uncannily capturing the tension between surface and depth, performance and vulnerability.

In her solo exhibitions such as Passionate Attitudes, Hard Boiled, and Fallen Scale, Blue M. reinterprets historical, folkloric, and mythological narratives, reclaiming spaces like Japanese bathhouses (onsen) and Shinto myths as sites of feminine agency, introspection, and performative play. Her immersive environments balance surreal, hyper-stylized worlds with moments of emotional intensity, translating the chaos and catharsis of lived experience into visual form. Whether depicting table tennis as a bonding ritual, bathhouses as private utopias, or mythological figures navigating contemporary life, her paintings reveal the fluid interplay between identity, culture, and memory.

Zoé Blue M. earned her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2023 and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019, where she received the Florence Leif Award. Her solo exhibitions include Jeffrey Deitch (New York), Loyal (Stockholm), Page NYC (New York), Anat Ebgi, Gallery @ El Centro, and In Lieu (Los Angeles). Group exhibitions include Jeffrey Deitch and Gagosian (Miami), Jeffrey Deitch (Los Angeles), Real Pain Fine Arts (Los Angeles), Martha’s Contemporary (Austin), Xiao Museum (Rizhao, China), and Loyal @ El Royale (Los Angeles).

Education

2023 University of California Los Angeles, MFA
2019 Rhode Island School of Design, BFA

Solo Exhibitions

2025
Hard Boiled, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY

2024
Fallen Scale, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden

2021
Sea Swallow, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA
Fault Lines, PAGE NYC, New York, NY

2020
Passionate Attitudes, Gallery @ El Centro, Los Angeles, CA
Phantasmal, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA

2019
Zoé Blue M., In Lieu, Los Angeles, CA

Group Exhibitions

2025
El Royale III, Loyal at El Royale, Los Angeles, CA

2024
El Royale II, Loyal at El Royale, Los Angeles, CA

2022
100 Years, Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch, Miami, FL
Wonder Women, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA
I’m Stepping High, I’m Drifting, and There I Go Leaping, Xiao Museum, Rizhao, China
Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, curated by Sow & Tailor, JACCC, Los Angeles, CA
Wonder Women, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY

2021
Women in Paris, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France
Bad Girls, Wallspace, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Hot Concrete, Sow and Tailor, Los Angeles, CA
Invasive Species, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA

2020
Zoé Blue M. and Mark Williams, The Gallery @ El Centro, Los Angeles, CA
HU, Real Pain Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA

2019
Salon de Normandy, Normandy Hotel, Paris, France
Another Scorcher, Martha’s Contemporary, Austin, TX
Three Oh One, Memorial Hall Gallery, Providence, RI

2018
GIFC, Patrick Parrish, New York, NY
In the Mood for Love, Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI
Group Show, Body Field, Los Angeles, CA
Center Mid, Infinity Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Code-Mixing, CAROUSEL, Los Angeles, CA

2017
Late Night Pundit, FRI-ENDS, Providence, RI
Elude, CAROUSEL, Los Angeles, CA

Awards and Residencies

2019 Florence Leif Award
2019 Vermont Studio Center
2019 Anderson Ranch