Inside her pristine, light-drenched studio just off Collins Avenue, Rachel Lee Hovnanian creates her masterpieces across various mediums. With sophistication that’s unparalleled, we introduce you to this globally renowned artist making moves in the heart of Miami Beach.
WRITTEN BY ERIN MICHELLE NEWBERG
After years of creating in Wynwood, an area she considered the art hub of South Florida, Hovnanian was searching for more. She wanted a space that could accommodate the scale of her practice and provide a greater connection to the natural world. When she stepped into this Miami Beach studio in 2023, the decision was a no-brainer. “The light, the view, the openness,” she recalls, “it was everything,” and it’s simply the perfect environment for my large-scale installations and paintings.” The space is vast, with 6,000 square feet of whitewashed walls and ‘essential natural light’ that had her at hello. It is within these walls that her monumental pastel-hued paintings, mixed-media works, and sculptures breathe and come to life.
Hovnanian’s life in art began long before she claimed her first professional studio. Growing up in Houston, Texas, and Cuernavaca, Mexico, her journey was steeped in creativity. Her parents both painted, her mother ran a gourmet culinary school, and her father was a writer and professor. Dinner parties brought artists, thinkers, and cultural luminaries into the family home, and summers in Mexico saturated her young mind with color, craftsmanship, and texture. “Those early experiences taught me not just how to see art,” she says, “but how to live it.” Early exposure to that community, including the studios of Janice Biala and Balcomb Green, played a vital role in shaping her artistic awareness.
Her formal training took her from the University of Texas at Austin to Parsons School of Design in New York. She also worked as an artistic director at McCann-Erickson, refining the conceptual lens that would become central to her work. Today, her practice spans sculpture, painting, installation, and performance, with a thematic focus on our digital dependencies, the illusion of perfection, and the fragile balance between the authentic and the artificial.
One of her most iconic works, Poor Teddy in Repose—a 15-foot bronze sculpture of a teddy bear pierced with a knife—serves as a warning bell. “It’s about what happens when we substitute screens for human connection, even with our children,” she explains. The piece now resides in a roundabout in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, confronting passersby with its mix of innocence and provocation. Hovnanian’s installations often invite active participation, challenging viewers to step beyond passive observation. Her works You Are Not Alone and Angel’s Listening, first shown at the Venice Biennale, asked visitors to anonymously share words they’d never spoken aloud. The resulting atmosphere was one of intimacy and vulnerability, with sculptures of angels and their bound mouths symbolizing a collective silence.
The time required for each piece varies depending on the concept and materials. “My Narcissus wall sculptures demand a painstaking level of detail, often taking months to complete,” she shares, “while other projects span several years.” For instance, with Beyond the Hedges, she developed a series of large-scale oil paintings and mixed-media collages over three years before the exhibition debuted at COUNTY in Palm Beach.
Her work lives in private collections across the globe, owned by figures like Beth DeWoody, Tory Burch, Peter Marino, and
the Pritzker Corporation. And yet, Hovnanian insists her greatest ambition isn’t a specific museum or location—it’s impact. “The right space provokes, seduces, unsettles,” she says. “It draws the viewer into an exchange they can’t walk away from.”
