Nao Bustamante

Nao Bustamante is from the Central Valley of California, and is now a proud Angeleno. Her precarious artwork encompasses performance, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, writing and often includes community collaboration. She just opened a project space, called Grave Gallery, on the site of her burial plot in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Bustamante has presented in institutions and underground sites around the world. She has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Performance Biennial Deformes, (Chile), the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki, and the International Sundance Film Festival, where she received the Chase Legacy Award in Film, co-sponsored by Kodak and HBO. Bustamante received the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, a Lambent Fellow, and was awarded The Mike Kelley Foundation Artist Project Grant and the California Community Foundation Fellowship. For her work looking at the history of the pelvic examination, she has also received a Creative and Research Grant from University of Southern California. Nao is a 2024 recipient of the Rome Prize.