Cute ‘n' Cuddly

Gabriela Noelle is quick to offer how her visual style is meant to evoke an idyllic, fantastical childhood, swirling with bright hues and soft-and-fuzzy textures. Yet the Miami-based artist admits that she didn’t have such creative tendencies when she herself was a kid. “I was pretty serious,” she says. “I think the key is to be more childlike and to be in the moment through play.”

‍

At Art Basel Miami Beach, Noelle debuted a series of new custom designs at a pop-up at the Bass Museum that includes tops, pants, totes, and plushy charms drawing on the forms of pop-art-y plant life such as flowers, bananas and tomatoes, as well as the cutesy-fied ladybugs and bumble bees. (On a conceptual level, for Noelle, the flowers- and produce-as-motifs double as commentary on how “these items are limited,” she adds. “I call them perishable—you get them while they're hot, while they're available during art week, and and then they'll be gone.”)

The collection’s “Garden Club” tees and crewnecks feature Noelle’s drawings of sweetly smiling flower-faces. For the display, Noelle strategically folded each shirt into a paper cone so as to make it look like the flower imagery is emerging from the cone, as if in a bouquet. “Imagine being able to give someone a memento of this week, and it’s like you're gifting them a bouquet. But really it's, it's a crew neck,” she explains with joy in her voice. For the occasion, Noelle also devised candles and their packaging for French candle-maker Cander that meld the latter’s stern minimalist forms with goofy faces illustrated by Noelle over sunset-colored gradient patterns. 

‍

Through previous bodies of work, Noelle had conceived something of her own cinematic universe, starring, in her telling, “a child of the future” who finds themselves alone, in a desolate landscape, and imagining a whimsical cast of characters for company. This was vividly conveyed in her 2023 collaboration with Pharrell Williams, “Imaginary Phriends,” a series of neon-furred, gumdrop-shaped sculptures with large, cartoonish eyes. A testament to how her style speaks to real children, her 4-year-old twins are her most earnest collectors. “I’ll show them something, and I’ll be like, ‘It’s for a museum.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s cool. But it’s also for us, right?’’’ Noelle says. “They love it, and I’m lucky to be able to create little items for them.” 

‍

‍Gabriela Noelle x The Shop Pop-Up will be up from December 21, 2024, to January 18, 2025, at The Bass at 2100 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, Florida, 33139