NAO BUSTAMANTE

ARTISTS

Nao Bustamante (b. 1963) is a legendary artist, residing in Los Angeles, California. Bustamante's precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, and writing. The New York Times says, "She has a knack for using her body." Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities, and underground sites all around the world. 

She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New York Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Sundance International Film Festival/New Frontier, Outfest International Film Festival, El Museo del Barrio Museum of Contemporary Art, First International Performance Biennial, Deformes in Santiago, Chile and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She was also an unlikely contestant on the TV network, Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." In 2001 she received the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. In 2008 She received the Chase Legacy award in Film (In conjunction with Kodak and HBO). And was the Artist in Residence of the American Studies Association in 2012. In 2013, Bustamante was awarded the (Short-term) CMAS-Benson Latin American Collection Research Fellowship and also a Makers Muse Award from the Kindle Foundation. In 2014/15 Bustamante was Artist in Residence at UC Riverside and in 2015 she was a UC MEXUS Scholar in Residence in preparation for a solo exhibit at Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles. In 2020 Bustamante’s forthcoming VR film, “The Wooden People” received a producing grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation, and the National Performance Network and will be presented at REDCAT in 2021. 2021 also brought her success with her new research project, “BLOOM,” in which she is determined to redesign the speculum and take a stern look at the history of the pelvic examination. “BLOOM” has been supported by COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellowship, an Artpace Residency, and a USC Arts and Humanities award. 

Bustamante is an alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2020 she was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from her alma mater, SFAI. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Currently she holds the position of Professor of Art at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. 

“My works return year after year to haunt me.  It’s what I call a brain burr. Each work is fair game to be used as material. But the medium chooses me…”

Nao Bustamante and Fufu (photo: Eleanor Goldsmith)

VIDEO STILLS / PERFORMANCE DOCUMENTATION

SELECTED ARTWORKS

PRESS / INTERVIEWS / ESSAYS

ARTnews

Seven Artists Win Coveted Rome Prize, Including Dread Scott & Nao Bustamante

By Max Durón

April 24, 2023

HyperAllergic

LA’s Hottest New Gallery Is in a Cemetery

By Matt Stromberg

February 22, 2023

The Art Newspaper

Hollywood’s newest art space takes up residence in artist's future burial plot

by Scarlet Cheng

February 18, 2023

HyperAllergic

The Founding Mother of Southern California’s Chicano Drag Scene

By Dakota Noot

January 11, 2023

The Latinx Project

BLOOM Welcomes Viewers Into the Vaginal Imaginary

by Laura G. Gutiérrez

September 3, 2021

HyperAllergic

Nao Bustamante Redesigns a Common Gynecological Tool

By Lauren Moya Ford

August 17, 2021

Brown University

Leticia Alvarado and Nao Bustamante on Latina ‘suciedad'

November 6, 2015

Los Angeles Times

Femininity in Kevlar: Nao Bustamante’s women of the Mexican Revolution

By Carolina Miranda

May 14, 2015

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position

by José Esteban Muñoz

Spring 2006

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory

The Vulnerability Artist: Nao Bustamante and the Sad Beauty of Reparation

by José Esteban Muñoz

July 2006

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

José Muñoz interview with Nao Bustamante

2002

Announcement  ~  April 20, 2023



Track 16 is thrilled to announce the gallery representation of the artist Nao Bustamante. Responsible for influencing a generation of artists, the late scholar Jose Muñoz wrote on Bustamante’s practice, “I want to call attention to the ways in which Bustamante's performance practice engages and re-imagines what has been a history of violence, degradation, and compulsory performance. For a female artist of color to engage this field is not only historically loaded, but it is also extremely vulnerable making.” Her work encompasses performance, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, and writing focused on ideas on vulnerability, abjection, and humor. Bustamante, in partnership with Track 16, recently opened a project space, called Grave Gallery, on the site of her burial plot in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Grave Gallery garnered much media attention, seemingly cutting through the bloat of Frieze week activities. Bustamante’s first solo exhibition with Track 16 will take place in 2024.