Nao Bustamante
Nao Bustamante is a Chicana multimedia and performance artist,[1] from the San Joaquin Valley in California.[2] Her work largely explores issues of ethnicity, class, gender, performativity, and the body. She first trained in postmodern dance before moving into the realm of performance in the mid-1980s. She has been called "the doyenne of the Bay Area’s underground cultural scene."[3]:178 She holds a BFA/MA from the San Francisco Art Institute and currently serves as Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art[4] at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.[2] She has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New York Museum of Modern Art, Sundance, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki.[4] In 2007, Bustamante was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. Bustamante competed in the first season of Bravo's Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.[5]
Notable Works
- Indig/urrito, 1992: Performance commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of America during which Bustamante "challenged the white men in the audience to go onstage to express their apologies for the years of oppression of indigenous peoples by eating a piece of a burrito that Bustamante had strapped on to her hips."[6][7]
- Rosa Does Joan, 1992: In arguably her most widely seen 'performance,' Nao created the character of "Rosa" the exhibitionist, to appear on the Joan Rivers Show.[8]
- STUFF!, 1996-8 (with Coco Fusco): Performance which explores sexual and spiritual tourism and its impact on Latin women, based on interviews with Cuban sex workers and child street vendors in Chiapas, Mexico.[3]:179
- America the Beautiful, 1995: Extended reflection on the social forces that confine and contain feminine creativity, using her own body as a canvas.[3]:56[9]
- Neopolitan, 2003: Video installation that includes a loop tape of the artist breaking out into spontaneous sobbing. The TV playing the loop is covered by a multicolored cozy that was crocheted by the artist, among other crocheted items. The installation, according to cultural critic José Esteban Muñoz, is "an illustration of the depressive position and its connection to minoritarian aesthetic and political practice."[10][11]
References
- ↑ McGarry, Kevin. "The New Muse | Nao Bustamante." Editorial. New York Times Style Magazine 9 June 2009: T Magazine. New York Times Company, 9 June 2009. 31 Oct. 2014.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.arts.rpi.edu/pl/faculty-staff/nao-bustamante
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Fusco, Coco, ed. Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas. London: Routledge, 2000.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.naobustamante.com/about.html
- ↑ "Work of Art Photos - Nao Bustamante". Bravotv.com. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
- ↑ http://www.naobustamante.com/art_indigurrito.html
- ↑ http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/000509510.html
- ↑ http://www.naobustamante.com/art_rosadoesjoan.html
- ↑ http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/001018439.html
- ↑ Muñoz, José Esteban. "Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31.3 (2006): 675-88.
- ↑ http://vimeo.com/60283405